Early to Bed, Prevent Sudden Death

What did Female Officer Shi's mission say?

—Open the door within three hours to complete the mission.

As long as the door was opened, that counted. That was Gu Mian's understanding.

Of course, he had tried following the rules, properly solving the mission's puzzle.

But when he saw that utterly incomprehensible painting, he immediately surrendered to his own intelligence.

He couldn't make heads or tails of it!

Rather than waste time on pointless nonsense, he might as well do something practical. Thus, the electric drill Fatty had given him came in handy.

When the door was slapped open, the officer inside had a completely twisted expression.

She had probably imagined that this doctor with an IQ of 250 would blaze a trail through every obstacle, crush every puzzle he encountered, and use his brilliance to open the door for her.

Who would have thought the door really would open, but the process would be nothing like she had imagined.

Female Officer Shi's face twitched uncontrollably. "I guessed the ending..."

Before she could finish, her entire body flickered a few times, as though she were about to be teleported out of the instance.

Yet even as she flickered, the female police officer stubbornly spoke up, desperately roaring out the rest of her sentence: "But I never guessed the beginning! You don't play by the rules!"

As soon as her voice fell, the figure in the hospital room vanished.

Gu Mian was left standing alone at the ward door, mulling over her words.

"My life really can't follow the usual script. If it did, I'd have died eight hundred times over by now."

Muttering to himself, he glanced at the game panel.

The time was now 10:05, and the panel showed that the instance had already been running for two hours.

There was one hour left.

The mission progress had now become (4/5).

He only needed to find the last patient and forcibly help them.

Gu Mian had actually considered creating a patient. Injuries counted as illnesses too—he could slash someone and then forcibly help them.

But there was still plenty of time. He would only do something so immoral if there was truly no other choice.

He was a doctor, after all. Was forcibly creating patients really okay?

But as the saying went, coincidence made a story.

Before he had fallen so low as to forcibly create a patient, Gu Mian ran into the fifth patient.

He knew full well that his life was filled with countless coincidences, so he had long guessed the fifth patient's identity—

His childhood sweetheart, whom he had grown up with.

With this, the five-member supporting cast from Qidian was finally complete.

They had indeed grown up together as childhood friends, but the "sweetheart" part was false.

This childhood sweetheart's gender was a little off. If he had to call it something, it should have been a childhood friend.

Wearing glasses and looking utterly indifferent, he lay quietly in a morgue freezer, seriously playing the role of a corpse. Even a zombie smashing into his face would not have stirred him.

Gu Mian found Chu Changge in the morgue.

Inside one of the morgue freezers.

Finding a patient in the morgue was no easy feat, but Gu Mian had always behaved differently from ordinary people, so it was not too strange for him to end up there.

The corpse storage cabinets in this instance's hospital differed from those in normal hospitals.

The freezers here lay on the floor like coffins, with glass panels facing the ceiling, presumably so doctors could conveniently observe which dead person was coming back to life.

Gu Mian stood before one freezer, lowering his head to look at the person inside. "Changge, aren't you cold?"

Chu Changge clasped his hands over his chest in a posture fit for burial. "Cold."

As he spoke, a stream of snot ran from his nose.

But he suddenly inhaled sharply and sucked the clear liquid back in, still wearing the same expressionless face as though nothing had happened.

Chu Changge was also from Qidian Orphanage.

Though he was not quite as bizarre as Gu Mian, he was not much better.

Chu Changge was a law student and had inherited the profession's defining traits—aloofness, a poker face, and lifelong solitude.

Most of the time, he looked as though his facial nerves had been severed. Even if the sky collapsed, his face would not so much as twitch.

If the sky really fell, Gu Mian would at least blurt out, "Holy shit," but Chu Changge truly would remain unmoved.

Once, a female classmate had subtly confessed to him by asking, "What does 520 mean?"

Chu Changge's answer was—

"Five means five implementations: implementing economic structural adjustment, implementing targeted poverty alleviation, implementing social security, implementing environmental governance, and implementing anti-corruption efforts."

"Two means two necessities: economic development is necessary, but so are clear waters and blue skies."

"Zero means zero tolerance for illegal activities."

The female classmate turned and left after hearing that. Afterward, no female classmate ever dared discuss political questions with Chu Changge again.

What goes around comes around; heaven spares no one.

Perhaps to punish Chu Changge for his complete lack of romance, this instance had directly matched him with a morgue freezer, then locked it from the outside, making him freeze for a full two hours before someone came for him.

By the time Gu Mian drilled open the lock, Chu Changge had been chilled to the bone.

He was like a popsicle freshly taken from the freezer in the height of summer, coldness seeping from his entire body.

Gu Mian disdainfully moved a little farther away from him. "You stayed in there for two hours and didn't freeze to death? Impressive, impressive..."

"It wasn't actually that cold." Chu Changge rubbed his reddened hands.

"By the way." Without exchanging pleasantries, he clasped his hands and looked at Gu Mian beside him. "I think I just saw you throw all the zombies here out."

At this moment, aside from the two of them, there were no other moving creatures left in this underground morgue.

He continued, "You look pretty impressive. Gu Mian, after being unlucky for so many years, are you finally about to turn your luck around?"

Twenty years.

The two had known each other for more than twenty years, so Chu Changge had witnessed Gu Mian's luck firsthand.

But Gu Mian knew perfectly well that turning his luck around was impossible. It would never happen in this lifetime.

He sighed.

"For over twenty years, I've been through train derailments, twenty-eight-car pileups, gas leaks, mine gas explosions, eighteen flowerpots falling one after another right onto my head, and a landlord who risked his life trying to kill me..."

"Life has done everything in its power to kill me, but I still survived."

"But I never expected that, just to kill me, life would come up with a game like this."

Chu Changge frowned at that.

He knew that dying in an instance did not mean truly dying, but from Gu Mian's tone, that did not seem to be the case.

He pushed up his glasses. "Let me guess. Are you different from everyone else again?"

Different was putting it mildly. It was downright insane!

Gu Mian paused, then spoke heavily.

"When you die in an instance, you don't really die. But I do."

"When time runs out, you get teleported away, but I stay behind."

"That means if I fail to complete my mission, I may be trapped in this instance forever."

Chu Changge's hand froze as he adjusted his glasses. "That really is excessive... What's your mission?"

Gu Mian spread his hands. "Help five patients. Either treat them or help them complete their missions. Now I'm only missing the last patient."

As he spoke, he sized up Chu Changge. "I saw you seemed to shed some clear, sparkling snot just now?"

Chu Changge fell silent for a moment, then nodded. "Then let me be your last patient."

As he spoke, he raised a hand and patted Gu Mian. "Don't worry. You probably won't die before we settle the score between us."

Gu Mian looked completely baffled. "What score do we have to settle?"

"The score from kindergarten, when you lifted my skirt."