Chapter Summaries

Qin Manjiang and five other players began a Ghost Story Game as new caregivers at Ping'an Hospital, where Head Nurse Liu Junqiu assigned them to choose one patient each. Qin Manjiang chose Li, a patient with doppelgänger syndrome, after recognizing something familiar in her condition.

• Qin Manjiang woke with Chen Zhiyuan, Wen Liangsheng, Xinxin, Li Daiping, and Jian Cunxin in caregiver uniforms as Liu Junqiu introduced them to their duties.
• Li Daiping chose the nine-year-old boy with micropsia after Liu Junqiu warned that he had hurt many people.
• The group declined to take the twenty-five-year-old man with walking corpse syndrome after Liu Junqiu said his previous caregiver had gone mad.
• Qin Manjiang volunteered to care for the twenty-one-year-old woman with doppelgänger syndrome, whose delusions made her dangerously suspicious of others.
• Liu Junqiu told Qin Manjiang that the patient used the single-character name Li and would go berserk if addressed by her full name.

At Ping'an Hospital, the players chose patients to care for and began inspecting the unsettling ward before their shift. They discovered blood and a woman's corpse hidden beneath fresh plaster in the corridor wall.

• Nurse Liu assigned Jian Cunxin patient number four, Chen Zhiyuan patient number six, and Wen Liangsheng patient number two after the three drew lots.
• Nurse Liu told the group to wait in the break room until the eleven o'clock shift change and warned them not to wander.
• Chen Zhiyuan suggested that the break room might be the only safe place, while Qin Manjiang pointed out that the hospital's flimsy doors, unprotected windows, gray surfaces, and yellow lighting were unusual.
• Wen Liangsheng noticed that the corridor wall had been repainted recently, and Jian Cunxin smelled blood and scraped away the fresh coating.
• Wen Liangsheng picked at the plaster and exposed the outline of a woman's face, revealing a corpse embedded in the wall.

Nurse Liu assigned the six visitors to patients in separate ward buildings, and Qin Manjiang headed alone to the Third Ward Building to find patient number three, Li. As he entered the dark building, the [I] doll moved in his hand.

• Nurse Liu ordered the six to tend to their assigned patients and warned them to be in their rooms by ten thirty.
• Chen Zhiyuan proposed that the group cooperate and form a contact group, but Qin Manjiang left before the discussion ended, followed by Jian Cunxin.
• Qin Manjiang noted that Ping'an Hospital's full moon did not match the lunar date in reality and set off for the Third Ward Building.
• Qin Manjiang entered the Third Ward Building and began searching for Li, patient number three.
• Qin Manjiang felt the [I] doll move in his palm and realized it seemed to have come alive.

Qin Manjiang discovered that his Permanent Item, the doll [I], had come alive and was guiding him through the hospital. After entering the only lit room on the Third Floor, he saw the door display identify him as Li.

• The doll [I] tugged Qin Manjiang left, bit him when he poked it, and showed that it could move and understand him.
• Qin Manjiang followed the doll's direction, found an empty plastic bag that smelled of bloody raw meat, and kept it.
• Qin Manjiang climbed to the Third Floor with the doll and approached Li's illuminated room before his ten-thirty deadline.
• The room's door opened by itself, and a powerful suction pulled Qin Manjiang inside as the ward lights came on.
• Qin Manjiang found the room empty and saw the LED screen identify him as Li, admitted.

Qin Manjiang experienced a terrifying encounter in Li’s ward, died, and suddenly found himself back at the doorway before the night’s events had fully begun. After Nurse Liu arrived and left him alone with Li, Li asked whether he was someone from outside.

• Qin Manjiang found himself transformed into Li and hid in the dark ward as a twisted figure approached his bed.
• The figure snapped Qin Manjiang’s neck, but he opened his eyes at the ward entrance with Li alive on the bed and the time showing 10:28.
• Qin Manjiang noticed bruised fingerprints on Li’s neck as the sound of high heels approached, and Li asked him to let her attack him.
• Li bit Qin Manjiang’s arm while he struggled to break free, and the twisted figure at the doorway became Nurse Liu.
• Nurse Liu told Qin Manjiang to watch Li and left the ward, after which Li asked if he was someone from outside.

Li Daiping entered Ward One to investigate Xiaozhi, a nine-year-old boy whose micropsia could make people appear smaller. Xiaozhi shrank Li Daiping and killed him in the toilet, leaving Li Daiping’s corpse exposed beneath the bedcovers.

• Li Daiping carried a [False Tear] into Ward One as a last-resort defense, despite its condition that every other player must touch him to restore him from statue form.
• Li Daiping entered Xiaozhi’s ward while the boy appeared asleep and noticed a dark figure in the washroom.
• Li Daiping realized he had shrunk and was standing inside the toilet as a huge, water-covered Xiaozhi appeared above him.
• Li Daiping searched for the [False Tear] but found it missing as Xiaozhi flushed the toilet.
• A torrent of blood and remains pulled Li Daiping into the drain, killing him, and Xiaozhi revealed Li Daiping’s filthy corpse beneath the covers.

Xinxin visited Lian Yan and learned that he knew Ping'an Hospital was an independent world within the Ghost Story Game. As an Inspector approached, Lian Yan demanded her medical record and warned that he would have to attack her to maintain his role as a necrophile patient.

• Xinxin followed the sound of Lian Yan's violin to his ward and met him.
• Lian Yan told Xinxin that Nurse Liu was the only person besides the patients in the hospital and suggested she was more suspicious than they were.
• Lian Yan said he could not escape because the world existed through Nurse Liu and his role in the game made him a psychiatric patient who deserved suspicion.
• Lian Yan revealed that he had seen people like Xinxin arrive from outside the independent world, leaving her stunned that an NPC knew about the Ghost Story Game.
• As footsteps approached, Lian Yan demanded Xinxin's medical record and warned that he would have to attack her if the Inspector saw them together.

Qin Manjiang resisted Li’s attempt to manipulate him and bargained with her for information about the Main Building in exchange for the medical record. He left the Third Ward Building and reached the Main Building with the Doll, preparing to enter.

• Li told Qin Manjiang that she had entered and controlled his body, then directed him to the Main Building for something he needed.
• Qin Manjiang pretended to leave, caught Li watching the medical record, and offered to trade it for information.
• Li said that the person in the Main Building would not come that night and that Qin Manjiang’s needed item was there.
• After Qin Manjiang left, Li’s body churned as she said she wanted to leave and that it was time for someone else.
• Qin Manjiang crossed the hospital grounds with the Doll and arrived at the Main Building, asking it to watch his back.

Qin Manjiang followed a trail of fresh blood through the Main Building before a suspicious phone call from Chen Zhiyuan made him realize someone else might be calling. Earlier, Chen Zhiyuan had encountered a self-harming patient who attacked him, and he discovered medicine that he urgently wanted to tell Qin Manjiang about.

• Qin Manjiang entered the Main Building at night and followed a trail of fresh blood upstairs, using his doll to help detect danger.
• Chen Zhiyuan found a patient with severe self-harm tendencies eating her own eyeball in the Sixth Ward Building.
• The patient attacked Chen Zhiyuan, who shut the room door and fled, dropping the medical record.
• Chen Zhiyuan called Qin Manjiang and excitedly said he had found the patients' medicine.
• Qin Manjiang realized the caller's questions were suspicious and hung up, while a deathly pale woman held Chen Zhiyuan's phone.

Chen Zhiyuan escaped Nurse Liu by hiding in the Congealed Jade Gourd Space, while Qin Manjiang continued following bloodstains through the Main Building and found a head nurse badge belonging to Lian Yan. The chapter left Qin Manjiang trapped in a ward as the eyeball-covered female nurse watched him from outside the window.

• Chen Zhiyuan encountered Nurse Liu at Building Six and vanished into the Congealed Jade Gourd Space to escape her.
• Chen Zhiyuan realized he could remain in the gourd for at most a day without food or water and hoped others would find clues.
• Qin Manjiang learned from a call made on Chen Zhiyuan's phone that the ghost knew they had left Building 3 but could not sense their location.
• Qin Manjiang chose to keep following bloodstains through the Main Building and found an ID badge identifying Lian Yan as the Psychiatry department's head nurse.
• After the Doll warned him someone was approaching, Qin Manjiang hid in a ward and saw the eyeball-covered female nurse clinging outside the window.

Qin Manjiang used [I]'s Sacrifice ability to eliminate the Vengeful Ghost's Ignore Gravity, then tried to escape as it pursued him through Ping'an Hospital. After Jian Cunxin directed him to the rooftop, he found the door locked and instead set up another plan, ending as he ran toward the approaching ghost.

• Qin Manjiang sacrificed his mercy to eliminate the Vengeful Ghost's Ignore Gravity, causing it to fall from the hospital wall, and then fled.
• Qin Manjiang called Li Daiping and Xinxin, but neither answered; Jian Cunxin picked up and told him to meet her on the rooftop in five minutes.
• Qin Manjiang questioned how Nurse Liu's duplicates worked and wondered why Lian Yan had an employee badge identical to Nurse Liu's.
• Qin Manjiang reached the stairwell to the rooftop but found the iron door locked, so he messaged Jian Cunxin and returned to the fifth-floor corridor.
• Qin Manjiang placed his phone inside a patient room, then charged toward the stairs as the Vengeful Ghost came up, putting his survival plan into action.

Qin Manjiang escaped the Main Building by tricking the Vengeful Ghost into searching an air vent while he hid nearby, then returned to the Third Ward Building with his medical record. He recognized the assignment as a safe haven and settled in to rest, while Li watched him with growing suspicion and Jian Cunxin learned he could not meet her.

• Qin Manjiang used a ringing phone to divert the Vengeful Ghost, then fled down the stairs as she pursued him.
• On the third floor, Qin Manjiang opened an air vent and hid in a nearby room, tricking the ghost into crawling inside while he escaped downstairs.
• Qin Manjiang reached the Third Ward Building and realized that Nurse Liu's patient-care assignment had provided a safe house, while exploration had helped him discover how to escape.
• Li watched Qin Manjiang's clenched hand and noticed that his behavior and her own feelings had changed after his trip outside.
• Jian Cunxin received Qin Manjiang's message that he could not make it and concluded that he had found a way to escape on his own.
• Qin Manjiang took the quilt and curled up in a chair to sleep, keeping his medical record with him as Li watched him warily.

Xinxin watched Lian Yan struggle against an unknown will and became increasingly curious about him, then joined the remaining Players to collect medication. With Li Daiping and Chen Zhiyuan missing and Wen Liangsheng coughing badly, Qin Manjiang suspected the patients’ medical records could give them dangerous abilities.

• Xinxin recalled how Lian Yan fought to restrain himself after she refused to give him his medical record, and how Nurse Liu beat him before leaving.
• Lian Yan played his violin in the morning, and Xinxin studied his medical record, which identified him as a necrophile.
• A speaker summoned caregivers to the Main Building to collect medication, and Xinxin deliberately left Lian Yan’s ward door unlocked as she departed.
• Xinxin met Qin Manjiang, Jian Cunxin, and Wen Liangsheng, while Li Daiping and Chen Zhiyuan were missing and Wen Liangsheng coughed repeatedly.
• Qin Manjiang warned that medical records might give patients abilities tied to their conditions, and Wen Liangsheng revealed that he no longer had his record.

Qin Manjiang and the others collected medicine and discovered that Nurse Liu refused to deliver it to Wards One and Six, while Xinxin revealed that the hospital’s patients’ occupations and illnesses could change. Back in her room, Xinxin learned from Lian Yan that the Safety Key would change on the second night and that failing to find it would mean death.

• Wen Liangsheng told Qin Manjiang that the patient with Walking Corpse Syndrome had shown no interest in his medical record.
• Qin Manjiang and the others worried about the patients in Wards One and Six, whose caregivers were missing and whose illnesses might flare up if they did not take their medicine.
• The four collected their medicine from Nurse Liu, who angrily refused to deliver medicine to Wards One and Six and appeared afraid of those wards.
• Xinxin told Qin Manjiang that the occupations and illnesses of the seven people in the hospital were not fixed, and Qin Manjiang recalled Lian Yan’s work badge.
• Xinxin offered Lian Yan his medicine, but he warned that taking it would leave him unable to protect her that night.
• Lian Yan told Xinxin that the medical record had been the Safety Key on the first night, but that the key would change on the second night and she would die if she failed to find it.

Qin Manjiang discovered that Li was a former Player whose medicine briefly let her regain control of her body, while she warned him to run. At the morning meeting, Xinxin used Lian Yan’s staff badge to support his claim that the hospital’s identities rotate and proposed that the group visit him to verify his information.

• Qin Manjiang gave Li her medicine, and she silently confirmed that she was Li and that the medicine briefly let her emerge from another consciousness.
• Li confirmed she had once been a Player, but Qin Manjiang left without responding to her unspoken plea for help after losing his mercy.
• The group met at eight thirty, and Qin Manjiang showed them Lian Yan’s staff badge.
• Xinxin concluded that hospital identities rotate and that the group needed to find a new safety key each night to survive.
• Wen Liangsheng and Jian Cunxin questioned Xinxin’s trust in Lian Yan, so she invited everyone to visit him and verify his claims.

Qin Manjiang theorized that a normal person hidden among the hospital’s seven people was responsible for Ping'an Hospital, then fell into a terrifying hallucination. He recognized Wen Liangsheng as the source of the illusion and woke to find Wen Liangsheng missing.

• Qin Manjiang questioned Jian Cunxin about her patient, and she explained that the patient had three personalities and mistook her for a fourth.
• Qin Manjiang proposed that one of the hospital’s seven people was normal and had no medical record, and suspected Wen Liangsheng’s patient was that person.
• Qin Manjiang felt watched and saw eyeballs growing from his sockets, while the others claimed they could see nothing unusual.
• A mysterious voice urged Qin Manjiang to think about what had changed, and he realized that Wen Liangsheng, his phone, and the others’ silence exposed the scene as a hallucination.
• Qin Manjiang punched Wen Liangsheng, who turned monstrous and threatened to come for him that night before the illusion vanished.
• Qin Manjiang woke on the concrete between the ward buildings with Xinxin beside him, but Wen Liangsheng was gone.

Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin suspected Wen Liangsheng had attacked Qin to stop him from discussing the person without a medical record, so they went to Ward Two to investigate. As they searched, Jian Cunxin discovered that the building had a basement.

• Qin Manjiang told Xinxin and Jian Cunxin that Wen Liangsheng had attacked him after he began to suspect Wen Liangsheng was a ghost.
• Jian Cunxin reasoned that Wen Liangsheng had consciously tried to interrupt Qin rather than trigger a certain-death taboo, and she urged them to find him in Ward Two.
• Xinxin left to follow Lian Yan’s lead and look for another item that could protect them if the medical records stopped working; Jian Cunxin told Qin that Xinxin had been traumatized by watching a Vengeful Ghost hang her parents.
• Qin Manjiang secretly asked the Doll whether it sensed anything unusual, then wondered if Jiang Du’s voice had been inside his body all along.
• Jian Cunxin found a staircase leading to a basement in Ward Two.

Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin explored the strange basement beneath Ping'an Hospital and uncovered evidence that the hospital had swallowed its staff and patients. As they ventured farther underground, the blood-red soil turned swampy and began pulling them under, while a face resembling Wen Liangsheng appeared nearby.

• Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin descended into the basement and discovered that its red soil glowed and bled when Jian Cunxin stabbed it.
• Jian Cunxin dug up the corpse of Xiang Shaoyang, an attending physician in the Psychiatry department, and found that his body contained no blood.
• Qin Manjiang wondered how Jian Cunxin had known where to find the corpse, but he kept his questions to himself as they continued deeper into the basement.
• The red soil softened and began swallowing Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin, who grabbed each other's hands but could not stop themselves from sinking.
• Qin Manjiang spotted a mocking face resembling Wen Liangsheng in the soil and suspected Wen Liangsheng had caused the ground to change.

Jian Cunxin’s item transformed the basement into a sea of blood, leaving her badly weakened as Qin Manjiang rescued her. Qin Manjiang realized the sea followed the Opening Lines of Ping'an Hospital, and he and Jian Cunxin recognized that reaching shore required turning back.

• Jian Cunxin told Qin Manjiang to close his eyes, removed her mask, and used her item as the ground dissolved into a sea of blood.
• Qin Manjiang pulled the unconscious Jian Cunxin from beneath the blood and held her while searching for a way out.
• Jian Cunxin awoke, panicked over losing her mask, and revealed that using her item caused a curse to eat away at her face.
• Qin Manjiang reassured Jian Cunxin that he was not afraid of her appearance, then noticed the distant stairs seemed to be moving farther away.
• Qin Manjiang recognized the sea of blood as the sea of bitterness described in the Opening Lines of Ping'an Hospital, and Jian Cunxin realized they had to turn back.

Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin realized the way out of the boundless sea of blood was to dive beneath it, where they found a white light that overturned the world and brought them to shore. Jian Cunxin survived, but Qin Manjiang remained unconscious as she faced a mountain of bones.

• Qin Manjiang interpreted the Opening Lines as a clue that survival required keeping ghosts company and going alone to Yin Mountain.
• Jian Cunxin decided that the only way to shore was down, and Qin Manjiang agreed to dive with her into the sea of blood.
• Qin Manjiang spotted a white light beneath the bloody water and swam toward it as he ran out of breath.
• Jian Cunxin let go and pushed Qin Manjiang toward the light, but he grabbed her wrist and reached it with her.
• The white light enveloped them, overturned the world, and turned the sea of blood into red ground beneath their feet.
• Jian Cunxin found Qin Manjiang alive but unconscious and saw a towering mountain made of white bones ahead.