Closed Domain

"Weiyu, say... was the ceiling this busted when we first came in?"

"Hm? I don't think so," Su Weiyu said. "I wasn't really paying attention."

Rustling came from the ceiling overhead, and more powder sifted down.

The light in the ward suddenly dimmed. Sunlight slipped away through the gaps in the window blinds, as if day had abruptly turned to night outside. The sound of traffic on the road faded too. The last sliver of light vanished beyond the window, plunging the room into darkness so deep they could barely see their hands in front of their faces.

Su Weiyu gripped the hilt of her Odachi. Wang Long immediately switched on his phone's flashlight, its pallid glow illuminating his bewildered face. Holding up his phone, he headed toward the window to raise the blinds and check outside. But before he had taken more than a few steps, light streamed through the gaps again... it was daylight outside once more.

Yet beyond the window, everything remained deathly silent.

Standing at the window, Wang Long gave the cord beside it a gentle tug, raising the entire blind. But instead of an ordinary sky, there was another hospital ward outside!

"What is going on? I knew I was dreaming! I'm dreaming! I'm still dreaming!" Liu Guangyao stumbled out of bed and pulled a fruit knife from beneath his pillow with his uninjured left hand, pointing it at Xia Shou. Nobody knew when he had hidden it there.

"You're here to kill me! You're all here to kill me!"

He slashed wildly in front of himself with the fruit knife, trying to intimidate them.

Xia Shou obligingly raised both hands and took two steps back, telling Su Weiyu, who had moved in front of him, "Don't hurt him."

"Don't worry. I know." Su Weiyu nodded in understanding. She raised her sword's hilt and struck the back of Liu Guangyao's hand, easily knocking the fruit knife to the floor. Her right foot slid forward to pin the knife, then swept it backward to Xia Shou's feet.

"Ah!" Terror spread across Liu Guangyao's face when he saw his fruit knife land at Xia Shou's feet.

When Xia Shou picked it up, Liu Guangyao dropped to his knees with a thud. His whole body trembled in a panicked reaction, tears and snot streaming uncontrollably down his face. He raised his one hand to shield his face, forcing fragmented pleas from his throat. "No... don't kill me... please don't kill me again."

"Mr. Liu! I'm your attending physician! Calm down! We-"

As Wang Long tried to soothe the screaming Liu Guangyao, he kept his eyes fixed on the ward beyond the window, not daring to look away.

His mind was in complete turmoil. He had no idea how to handle the chaos unfolding around him.

He completely understood Liu Guangyao's breakdown. Any ordinary person who saw the sky and street outside a street-facing window replaced by an entirely unfamiliar space would know something was wrong.

And Liu Guangyao's dreams were so similar to this environment that his reaction was only natural. If he had thought this was normal, then they would really have been in trouble!

"Mr. Xia, what do we do?"

Wang Long turned his ashen face toward Xia Shou. His position at the Containment Bureau was administrative. Beyond basic knowledge of anomalies, he had none of the specialized skills needed to deal with them.

At a time like this, he could only rely on a professional like Xia Shou!

Xia Shou frowned, his palms growing damp.

Disordered footsteps came from the corridor outside too, along with doctors and nurses shouting. Apparently, this anomaly was the kind ordinary people could see.

"It's a closed domain," Su Weiyu said gravely.

"What's a closed domain?"

"Something like the Blood Demon House, which uses a real-world object like a villa to create a passage connecting it to reality, is an open domain.

"But now we've entered this place without going through any passage. The domain actively pulled us in, so it's a closed domain."

"Which is more dangerous?"

By this point, Xia Shou understood exactly what entering a closed domain meant.

"So this is a hunting-ground-type anomaly that only selects prey weaker than itself," Xia Shou said grimly.

Su Weiyu nodded firmly. "That absolute trait makes even a level-one closed domain a terrifying threat. That's why closed domains are also often called death domains."

During their brief conversation, the ward continued to change rapidly. The white paint on the walls cracked and peeled away inch by inch. Creaking sounds came from the steel reinforcing bars rusting inside the concrete walls, as though the years were racing past within this room.

Finally, after a few minutes, the room stopped changing. Its four walls were now covered in a crisscrossing web of mottled cracks, though the fruit knife in Xia Shou's hand had remained unchanged.

Wang Long hurried to the head of the bed and picked up the medical call unit. After adjusting something on its back, he pressed the call button, murmuring a prayer. "Phones and the like don't work anymore. Hopefully this still does. Let's see if I can contact the other wardens."

"What does he mean by wardens?" Whenever Xia Shou encountered an unfamiliar job title, he asked Su Weiyu beside him.

"Some anomalous phenomena, like earthbound spirits, can't be moved and have to be contained on-site. The Containment Bureau builds camouflaged facilities around them and assigns wardens to watch over them. If there are wardens here, that means this hospital wasn't ordinary to begin with," Su Weiyu replied.

"Dr. Wang, what are you guarding here?" Xia Shou asked.

Wang Long wiped the sweat from his forehead and shook his head in bewilderment. "We're only looking after a few benign earthbound spirits. They need complicated care to continue existing over the long term, which is why the Containment Bureau built this hospital. They couldn't possibly have the power to create a closed domain!"

"So you don't know why this is happening either." Xia Shou tossed the fruit knife to Liu Guangyao, who was trembling on the floor. "Here, you can have this back. We won't hurt you, but there's definitely something more dangerous in this place. Protect yourself."

Liu Guangyao was stunned. He looked blankly at Xia Shou, then immediately picked up the fruit knife and tucked it against his chest. Rolling across the floor, he curled up beneath the hospital bed.

Xia Shou paid him no further attention. He walked to the door and gently pulled it open. The corridor was already in chaos, with a large crowd of patients' family members blocking the service desk at the far end and shouting at the nurses.

"What the hell kind of hospital is this? Are you trying to scare us with ghosts? I've got a meeting to get to! Are you going to cover my docked pay?"

"If your hospital doesn't sort this out right now, I'll report you when I get out! Fuck!"

"We don't understand what's happened either, and we can't contact anyone outside right now. Please stay calm and wait, all right?" The nurse at the desk shouted herself hoarse, but nobody paid her any attention. Everyone was venting their emotions.

"We're filing a complaint! All of us!"

On this floor, some people were making a scene, others were running around in a panic, and a few bolder ones had already climbed through the windows into the unfamiliar spaces beyond to investigate.

Some had even gathered to marvel at the mottled, cracked walls, showing no sense of urgency at all, as though they were certain they would eventually be rescued.

Just then, Alice suddenly reached into Xia Shou's pocket and took out the Little Mirror.

In the mirror's reflection, Xia Shou saw a patient with an entirely yellow face climbing in through the window at the end of the corridor.