Basement

"Are you sick?"

Two orderlies in white coats hurried over at the sound.

"Got any medicine?"

Chen Feng surrendered without a fight.

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

The lobby smelled strongly of disinfectant and cleaning products.

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

It stood in the center of the lobby, a glass-walled command post. The sanatorium's boss, Rabbit Nurse, sat inside, watching every patient through the glass like a monarch surveying her subjects.

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

It wasn't a great performance, but it was more than enough to fool a monster.

Before long, Rabbit Nurse's suspicion faded, and she looked away.

He'd 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 wouldn't be attacked.

Sure enough, the monsters in this hospital all obeyed some kind of rules.

Just wait. Once I've completed my Check-In and collected my Points, I'll turn you into spicy rabbit head.

Three days later.

Now thoroughly familiar with life in the sanatorium, Chen Feng had discovered that it was the most boring place in the world.

For one thing, bedtime was fixed. Everyone 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.

The Nurses' Station, where Chen Feng wanted to Check-In, was naturally off-limits to patients.

Treatment was fixed as well: one or two sleeping pills a day, or a sedative injection. Refusing the pills or injection broke the rules.

From the shrill bell that woke them in the morning to lights-out after their medication, everything they did was arranged and controlled by the nurses.

If anyone resisted, Rabbit Nurse would take out the Logbook with a hand tipped in orange-red nail polish.

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 someone's name by staring at them. That took over a minute.

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

As a patient of 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 out in three seconds, I'm dead.

But if she faces a stranger, she'll need to stare at them for over a minute first.

So a surprise encounter gives me the advantage.

In the lounge.

Patients wandered aimlessly around the lobby.

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

It failed.

"Fuck!"

Do I really have to go inside?

Chen Feng watched the rabbit-headed monster from behind, weighing his chances of smashing through the glass and ambushing her.

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

If I attack now, I've got a twenty percent chance at best. That's an eighty percent chance I'm screwed.

Chen Feng was still weighing his options when someone else made the first move—with their mouth.

A patient suddenly lunged at him and bit his thigh.

"Ah!"

Chen Feng kicked him away in pain.

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

Fuck. Why are there so many lunatics here?

Chen Feng cursed inwardly.

There were three kinds of patients in the sanatorium.

The first were genuinely mentally ill. The man before him, for example, imagined he was a dog: he bit people on sight and urinated everywhere to mark his territory.

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

The second kind had encountered the supernatural.

One man claimed he had seen an invisible monster beneath Cihang Bridge.

Someone else claimed an invisible rabbit kept harassing them.

Another claimed a cat had eaten his family when they went to an amusement park together.

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

Every time he heard their stories, a mechanical voice sounded in his head.

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

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

The third kind of patient was the Imposters.

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

Just as people who stayed too long at Internet Addiction Academy became Imposters, patients from the first two groups could also become Imposters after prolonged injections and medication. The sanatorium would then announce that they had been treated 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 prickle.

How many Imposters were hiding in Cihang City?

Perhaps, in Cihang City, humans were the invasive species.

That night.

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

But once he returned to his room, he secretly spat out the pill he had hidden beneath his tongue.

Spending too long in the sanatorium or Internet Addiction Academy risked turning him into an Imposter. He couldn't stay here.

It was time to act.

Still, he needed to guard against the nurse's ability.

With that in mind, Chen Feng tore a strip 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 pitch-black; he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

"Who would've thought? I've never even dared to eat shit, and now I'm exploring a hospital full of monsters. I'm so scared."

Chen Feng rose onto his toes and carefully made his way toward the far end.

At that moment, in the sanatorium's basement at the end of the corridor.

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