A group of people looked at Song Shi'an in surprise. The baby-faced girl said, "I didn't expect there really to be a thirty-third person!"
Song Shi'an casually tossed his pen into the pen holder on his desk, dusted off his hands, and said, "Let's go. The answer should be with that hidden participant. All the participants will be gathering in that room. Let's hurry."
The live chat exploded with comments.
"Holy crap!! There really is a thirty-third person! Amazing, bro!!"
"Did the production team provide a script for this episode...? This is outrageous! They knew there was an extra person just from a cell phone!"
"Terrifying observation and memory skills! Even a memory master would find it difficult to remember everyone's features in just a few minutes..."
"Don't exaggerate about how amazing this guy surnamed Song is, okay? A world memory master can memorize anything at a glance. It's only because he hasn't encountered a memory master that he's even in the running, otherwise, what chance does he have..."
Is it so hard to acknowledge someone's excellence?! No matter what they do, there's always this over-interpretation. If you don't help, you say they're just filling a quota; if you do help, you say they had a script...
Cheng Shuo stood silently to the side without saying a word. Song Shi'an patted him on the shoulder and said, "Let's go, buddy."
Cheng Shuo then came to his senses and followed behind him, the group heading towards room 207 on the second floor.
There were already more than a dozen people standing at the door of the ward. The leader, a mature woman with wavy hair, stood with her arms crossed against the wall. When she saw them arrive, she said, "You're here too? You all heard the announcement, right?"
Cheng Shuo nodded. "I heard that. The important clue should be behind the door."
A burly man simply reached out and pushed the door open.
The ward was twice the size of the ones we had searched before, with a metal-framed hospital bed in the center, and a woman sitting on it.
She was wearing a blue and white striped hospital gown, was in her thirties, had long hair draped over her shoulders, and a thin face with regular features.
What's most striking is her eyes; the whites of her eyes make up most of the area, and her pupils are so small they're almost invisible, resembling symptoms of an overdose of some kind of psychotropic drug.
The viewers in the live chat were shocked by this scene.
"This scared me!!! It's just a variety show, why are they making it so real?!"
"OMG, you scared me! Pay up! Compensate me for emotional distress!"
"This is the hidden participant! Great makeup and styling, thumbs up!"
"So, what's the use of this person? Is there some hidden plotline involved?"
The woman spoke, her voice hoarse and slow, as if she hadn't had water in a long time. "Another new doctor has arrived."
A round mirror hung on the wall of the ward, its surface covered with a layer of dust.
Song Shi'an glanced at the mirror and realized that the woman in the mirror was not sitting on the bed, but standing directly behind the mirror, facing the wall, motionless. The reflection was wrong!
This show is really something! They're scaring people half to death! Chinese horror is amazing!
Cheng Shuo, however, remained unfazed and cut to the chase, asking directly, "Who are you?"
The woman tilted her head. " Chen Yi."
"What illness do you have?" Cheng Shuo continued to press.
Chen Yi gave a strange smile, as if he had heard an interesting question, "I'm not sick, doctor. I can just see things you can't. For example, right now, there's a man standing behind you. He's wearing a white coat, and the wound on his neck is bleeding profusely, staining the floor red. He's looking down at you."
A chill ran down everyone's spine. Song Shi'an was standing to the side, but the image in the mirror had changed. Behind Cheng Shuo in the mirror was indeed a blurry white figure, the outline of which resembled an old photograph that had been soaked in water.
"What is the cause of your illness?" Cheng Shuo cut straight to the heart of the matter.
Chen Yi turned to him, her almost entirely white eyes staring at Cheng Shuo's face for a long time before she laughed out loud, "The cause of the illness? You are the patients. Each of you has a number on your person, and you are locked in something called rules. Every once in a while, you have to vote to kill someone, and then you call it treatment. So who is sick?"
Cheng Shuo asked from a different angle, "What happened the night you disappeared?"
Chen Yi's smile vanished, and she said, slowly and deliberately, "The light went out, and it walked out of the mirror. I stood face to face with it, and it smiled at me. After that, I couldn't tell who was who anymore."
Who is it?
"That's me in the mirror."
Without making a sound, Song Shi'an moved two steps to the left and then two steps to the right.
The images of everyone in the mirror changed in sync with his movements, except for his and Chen Yi's reflections, which were distorted. Was this the substitute for the third level...?
He suddenly realized that, starting with the cell phone in the morgue, the production team had deliberately placed this NPC in front of everyone, making everyone think that she was the hidden participant.
But in reality, the true hidden participant was mixed in with the crowd from beginning to end; he was the one who was marked.
Song Shi'an's heart skipped a beat. "Production team, please don't mess with him! The pressure is immense!!"
He originally just wanted An'an quietly coast along for three days, collect his money, and leave, but now he's inexplicably become an inside man. How is he supposed to do this job?!
The live chat was filled with question marks.
"What does this mean? I don't understand what this NPC is saying... My brain can't handle it!"
"I don't understand +1, let's keep reading. Anyway, all six patients are in this room, time should be running out soon, right?"
"If you ask me, those people from the very beginning were suspicious. They should have been the first to be Cheng Shuo, right? They were the ones who found most of the clues; they probably weren't the patients!"
"The analysis upstairs is right, I followed this trend, and I'm doomed! Everyone seems to be on the sick side!!!"
Song Shi'an stood at the back of the crowd, looked around the room, and roughly knew who the patients were.
Over the next two days, Song Shi'an intentionally or unintentionally steered their thoughts in another direction, determined to make everyone understand that he was from the ordinary camp.
After the final six patient codes were entered, the system announced, "The patients have won this round of ' Escape to Freedom '."
The five eliminated patients looked bewildered. "Huh? We won?"
The comments section was filled with disbelief.
"What! I've been watching for days, following their steps to understand it, and you're saying the patient's camp won!"
"His dad's dead; he bought the wrong stocks based on a novel, and chose the wrong side based on a variety show..."
"So who was the last patient? They've mistakenly killed almost half of the civilian faction! I'm speechless!"