In the darkness, Yu Xing lost his sense of touch and felt as if he were floating in someone else's dream.
Two voices appeared one after the other, as if they were talking.
One voice was hoarse and low. "You're my psychiatrist?"
The other was gentle, yet left no room for argument. "That's right. Starting today, I'll be responsible for your psychological treatment."
"Doctor, I'm perfectly normal. I'm afraid you'll be wasting your time."
"I'll make my own judgment."
After a brief silence, the gentle voice disappeared, leaving only the hoarse one to speak tentatively:
"Doctor? Doctor? Wake up, Doctor... Heh heh, can't wake up? I told you not to interfere with me."
The owner of the voice grew gleeful. "Now that you're in my hands, you'll pay for all the trouble you've caused me lately. Your corpse... I'll be taking that, hahahahahaha..."
The voice ended in a crazed burst of laughter. Yu Xing had just muttered, That laugh sounds awful, like it's about to crack as it spreads its wings, when his senses were forcibly cut off.
The metal surface against his back through his clothes was painfully hard and cold. As his consciousness gradually returned, Yu Xing frowned in discomfort.
He cracked open his eyes, and a blinding beam shone straight at him. The swelling pain in his eyes made him instinctively shield his face with the back of his hand.
The intense white light was so dazzling that Yu Xing felt he was going blind.
"Which little bastard's shining an operating light in my face..." He immediately recognized it as a surgical shadowless lamp. His complaint was barely audible. After checking his body and finding no aches or pain, he turned his head to avoid the lamp overhead and sat up.
As he moved, his pants seemed to bump into something. With a clatter, a scalpel fell to the floor.
"..." Yu Xing lowered his hand, rubbed his foggy head, and quietly surveyed his surroundings.
Hmm.
He seemed to be sitting on an operating table... no, a dissection table.
Some clean gauze and scissors had been tossed carelessly across it. If he hadn't been careful, he might have been poked.
He was wearing an ordinary set of loose hospital scrubs, with no sign that they'd been undone. As for his body, it was still his own.
The dissection table stood in a small room of about twenty square meters. The fluorescent light overhead was on, illuminating the entire room. He reached up to switch off the shadowless lamp, bringing the lighting into balance.
Small instruments were arranged around the table. On his right was a metal tray holding an assortment of more specialized knives. The whole setup looked ominous.
Especially the wooden shelves against the wall. Jars and bottles held various organs that could have belonged to anyone. The smell of formalin crept into his nostrils, making it impossible not to associate the room with words like "dissection," "death," and "murder."
The smell made Yu Xing sneeze. He rubbed his nose, then carefully climbed down from the table and stepped barefoot onto the clean floor.
"Given those two voices and the system's role analysis, I should be the 'doctor,' right?" There was no one else around, and he hadn't seen anything like a camera. At ease, he stretched and headed straight for the desk in the corner.
The desk was covered in bottles and jars. Some held chemical reagents, while others were empty. Most unusual of all, a bottle of salt sat among them.
But that wasn't important. In a conspicuous spot on the desk was a small black box glowing red, displaying [02:59:01]. The numbers kept counting down, accompanied by a steady "beep, beep," creating a sense of urgency.
Yu Xing didn't touch the box. He noticed a crumpled note trapped underneath it and pulled it free.
[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 find.]
[You know, Doctor, your arrogance disgusts me. Now I've brought you here. How about I give you a chance?]
[Escape through the front door within three hours, and you can write up everything you discovered today and hand it over to that damn superior of yours. If you can't escape... I'll tie you back to the dissection table and finish what I didn't get to do earlier, okay?]
[Go on, be afraid! Run for your life! Hahahahahaha... I'm watching you.]
"Oh, so it's that kind of scenario. Three hours must be the game's duration. That's what the system said, too." After reading the note, Yu Xing crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. He strolled over to the small room's door and turned the handle.
The door opened.
Yu Xing peered outside. It seemed to be a large, well-lit space. In the empty hall, he could see rows of metal gurneys for corpses, all neatly arranged. There were no bodies on them, only white sheets that had been partly pulled back.
"No rush, no rush. Let me think..." Yu Xing muttered as he shut the door again. He walked around the room. "The main objective is obvious, so there's nothing to discuss there. Let's sort out the characters first."
He stopped in front of the wall of jars. "I'm the doctor, so what's the other person? A criminal? A serial killer?"
Clearly, his doctor character was in a weaker position. In this deduction, he would basically be led around by the other person.
Yu Xing had no intention of letting that happen.
"If I learn about someone's abilities and personality first, I'll have a chance to fight back. After all, the one who left the note knows the doctor, not me."
"From the environment, this person seems to like things clean and keeps the place tidy. But the area around the dissection table is a mess, which suggests their mood changes when they deal with corpses. Nervousness or excitement could both cause someone to act differently. In short, they have unusual feelings about corpses."
"So they're probably not someone whose job involves handling corpses."
He surveyed the room, which was clean despite the mess. Then he tapped one of the glass jars with his long, slender fingers and casually picked up a jar containing a finger. Without hesitation, he opened it and took a sniff.
The smell was easy for Yu Xing to recognize. He murmured, "Soaking a corpse in a three-to-five-percent formalin solution can preserve it long-term. The procedure's correct, which means the one who left the note... I'll call them the killer for now. The killer either knows a bit of medicine or isn't opposed to the internet and knows how to use it to help with their crimes."
Some psychologically disturbed people were obvious at a glance. They had an aura that set them apart from everyone else, obsessively retreating into the "correct world" inside their own minds.
Others seemed no different from anyone else on the surface. They might even be the neighbors, coworkers, or friends you saw every day.
Yu Xing thought this killer belonged to the second type. It wasn't just the little details that suggested it. The killer's probing questions in their conversation were enough to make that clear.
"This killer has normal social relationships. While committing crimes, they have to worry about how society sees them."
He put the jar back after replacing its lid, then chose a larger one and carried it over.
The jar came up to Yu Xing's calf and contained a human arm.
Yu Xing opened the lid and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His pale hands went straight into the formalin solution, and he felt the joints of the arm inside.
"Hm?" His hand paused. "There's rigor mortis... The muscles are stiff and rigid, slightly contracted, and the joints won't bend. Did the owner of this arm die within the past one or two days?"
"Mm, fresh. Looks like this killer isn't digging up graves and stealing corpses."
Having confirmed that, Yu Xing put the jar back as it was and wiped his hands on a white cloth hanging nearby.
Formalin was corrosive, but it evaporated easily. Accidentally touching it wouldn't cause any problems, but after sticking his hands in and soaking them like Yu Xing had, it was best to wash them off.
Yu Xing searched the small room again, but found nothing special. He picked a knife that looked suitable from the metal tray and headed out into the hall.
The hall was more than four hundred square meters. A metal gurney stood about every three meters. The spaces beneath them were spotless, clearly cleaned every day.
"The killer must be a respectable person in everyday life." Yu Xing wandered around and found that the hall connected to three areas.
First, the front entrance.
There was a keypad beside the front door. With no clues at all, there was no way he could open it yet. His ultimate goal in this game was to get through that door and escape.
Second, a locked room.
There was a locked door on the left side of the hall. He had no idea what was inside.
Third, the kitchen and the bathroom.
...Those two places weren't combined, of course. They were just close together, and neither was locked.
In short, he'd searched the whole area. Except for the locked room, he was sure there was no one else around besides him. Otherwise, he would have seen them.
"The last line of the note said the killer was watching me?" Yu Xing wondered. In this deduction game, was the killer human, or did they exist as a ghost?
There was no way to confirm that for now. After wandering around a little, he decided to look for clues in the kitchen and bathroom.
The kitchen was large and semi-open. Two tomatoes had been left on the cutting board. Beside them were an egg beater and some beaten egg yolks.
"Planning to make tomato and scrambled eggs? But it looks like the salt's still in the dissection room. Will that even taste good?" Yu Xing clicked his tongue twice.
On the other side of the cutting board, a kettle was heating water. It was one of those automatic kettles that had become popular in recent years, with a little light underneath that switched off when the water boiled.
Everything suggested that someone had been here not long ago.
In fact, there might have been a killer cooking here just a minute before Yu Xing entered the kitchen.
Where had the killer gone?
All those questions came together in Yu Xing's mind, leaving him with only one thing to say: "What a shame. I won't get to hear the water boil in this horror game."
He'd gotten a little thirsty by the time he reached the kitchen, so he first rinsed his hands thoroughly under the tap, then eagerly opened the refrigerator.
There were some vegetables and meat in the fridge, but nothing to drink.
"Seriously? They don't even keep bottled water here?" Yu Xing began to close the fridge, disappointed, when he spotted a note tucked between the vegetables.
He reached in and pinched it out. Its white surface was covered in messy, blood-red writing:
[You still have time to eat and drink? You've only got three hours!]
Before you continue