Basement

"Are you sick?"

Two orderlies in white coats came running at the sound.

"Got any medicine?"

Chen Feng surrendered without a fight.

Escorted by the orderlies, he crossed a neatly trimmed lawn, passed through a dark, eerie corridor, changed into gray-and-white striped hospital clothes, and successfully infiltrated the sanatorium.

The lobby smelled of disinfectant and cleaning supplies.

Chen Feng looked around and quickly found his first Check-In location—the Nurses' Station.

It stood at the center of the lobby, a glass-walled command center. Rabbit Nurse, the sanatorium's boss, sat inside and watched every patient through the glass like a monarch looking down on her subjects.

When he noticed Rabbit Nurse looking at him, Chen Feng hurriedly gave her a goofy grin.

It was hardly a masterful performance, but it was more than enough to fool a monster.

Before long, Rabbit Nurse dropped her suspicions and looked away.

He had gotten away with it.

Chen Feng broke into a cold sweat. Anyone would be nervous with those uncanny red eyes fixed on them.

But he had confirmed something important: as long as he followed the rules, he would not be attacked.

Sure enough, the monsters in this hospital all operated by some set of rules.

Just wait. Once I Check-In successfully and get my points, I'll kill you and make spicy rabbit head.

Three days later.

Now thoroughly familiar with life at the sanatorium, Chen Feng found it was the most boring place in the world.

For one thing, bedtime was fixed. Patients had to get up at six thirty in the morning and go to sleep at ten at night. Anything else broke the rules.

Their movements were restricted, too. During the morning rest period, everyone had to sit silently in the lobby. In the afternoon, they could only walk around the wire-fenced lawn like birds in a cage.

Naturally, the Nurses' Station Chen Feng wanted to Check-In at was off-limits to patients.

Finally, treatment followed a fixed routine: one or two sleeping pills or a sedative injection every day. Refusing either was against the rules.

From the shrill bell that woke them in the morning to the medicine they took before lights-out, every part of their day was controlled by the nurses.

If anyone resisted, Rabbit Nurse would take out the Logbook with her orange-painted fingers.

From what Chen Feng had observed, the Logbook was a weaker version of the Death Note.

Killing someone with it took two steps:

First, its holder could learn a person's name by staring at them. This took at least a minute.

Second, drawing five circles after that person's name stripped them of thought and consciousness, turning them into an Imposter.

As a patient at the sanatorium, Chen Feng was already recorded in the Logbook.

If she wants to kill me, all she has to do is draw five circles. If I can't take her down in three seconds, I'm dead.

But if she wants to kill a stranger, she has to stare at them for over a minute first.

So a chance encounter would give me the advantage against her.

In the lounge.

The patients wandered aimlessly around the lobby.

Chen Feng crept to the edge of the Nurses' Station and silently tried to Check-In.

It failed.

"Shit!"

Do I really have to go inside?

Chen Feng watched the rabbit-headed monster from behind, weighing his chances of breaking the glass and catching her off guard.

This is tricky. If that were her only ability, she couldn't be stronger than the professor. She must have another card I don't know about.

If I attack now, my odds are twenty percent at best. That's an eighty percent chance I'm finished.

Chen Feng was still weighing the risks when someone else struck first—with his mouth.

A patient suddenly lunged and bit Chen Feng's thigh.

"Ah!"

Chen Feng kicked the man away in pain.

Strangely, even after taking a Brick-Burst Level kick, the man merely rolled a few times. Then he drooled as if nothing had happened and barked, "Woof! Woof!"

Damn it. Why are there so many lunatics here?

Chen Feng cursed inwardly.

The sanatorium's patients fell into three categories.

The first were genuinely mentally ill. The man in front of him, for example, believed he was a dog. He bit people on sight and urinated wherever he pleased to mark his territory.

There was also a murderer who saw everyone as monsters. Supposedly, he had brutally killed his entire family, probably because he had mistaken them for monsters.

The second category was people who had encountered anomalies.

One man claimed to have seen an invisible monster beneath Cihang Bridge.

Another claimed an unseen rabbit kept harassing him.

Yet another claimed a cat had eaten his family during a trip to an amusement park.

Their stories sounded so unbelievable that their families and the police had sent them to a psychiatric hospital. But Chen Feng knew they were telling the truth.

After hearing their stories, he had repeatedly heard a mechanical voice in his head.

[Five-star Check-In location discovered: Horror Amusement Park]

[Five-star Check-In location discovered: Crazy Zoo]

Finally, there was the third category of patients—or rather, Imposters.

Like the internet cafe attendants at Happiness Internet Cafe and the Model Students at Internet Addiction Academy, the Imposters here had their own name: the "Healed Ones."

Just as staying too long at Internet Addiction Academy could turn someone into an Imposter, patients in the first two categories could become Imposters after prolonged injections and medication. The sanatorium would then announce that they had been cured and have their families take them home.

Every day, the sanatorium admitted five to ten patients and sent away five to ten Imposters.

The thought made Chen Feng's scalp crawl.

How many Imposters are hiding in Cihang City?

Maybe humans are the invasive species here.

That night.

Chen Feng took a sleeping pill from the Nurses' Station window and swallowed it in front of the nurse.

But back in his room, he secretly spat out the pill he had hidden under his tongue.

Staying too long at the sanatorium or Internet Addiction Academy risked turning him into an Imposter. He could not linger here.

It was time to act.

Still, he needed to guard against Rabbit Nurse's ability.

With that in mind, Chen Feng tore a strip of white cloth from his bedsheet and wrapped it around the lower half of his face. Once he was sure no one would recognize him, he snapped the lock on his door and stepped into the sanatorium corridor.

Lights-out had passed. The corridor was so dark he could not see his hand in front of his face.

"Who'd have thought that I, a man who's never even dared to eat shit, would end up exploring a hospital full of monsters? I'm so scared."

Chen Feng walked on tiptoe, carefully making his way toward the far end.

At that moment, in the Basement at the end of the corridor.

A half-human, half-snake Demoness lay curled in a corner, weak and helpless.