Chapter 8: Contamination

There was no light source in the ward, and even the lamp was broken. Li Xuan could only fold up the map, tuck it into his shirt, and press it close against his skin. He planned to look at it again tomorrow.

Because of last night’s excursion, Li Xuan was exhausted. He slept until someone started shaking him, and only then did he wake up.

When he opened his eyes, the one shaking him was a female nurse in a pink uniform.

Li Xuan scratched his head and, without even brushing his teeth, followed the nurse out the door.

Then, all of a sudden, he felt a slight itch on his arm.

He found a moment when the nurse wasn’t paying attention, lifted his sleeve, and looked down quietly.

Just that one glance nearly scared Li Xuan so badly that he jumped straight up on the spot.

On his arm, an eye had actually grown.

Was it the map? Or was it because he had broken the rules and left the ward last night?

After a moment’s thought, Li Xuan felt it probably wasn’t either of those things.

He remembered the first rule on the patient guidelines.

"Please be sure to take your medication on time. It can help you resist hallucinations, auditory delusions, headaches, bodily distortions, and other symptoms."

So if you didn’t take the medicine, your body or mind would start having problems, huh?

But Zhou Hang had also told Li Ruyao that the result they had deduced from taking the medicine was game over.

Forcing down the panic in his chest, Li Xuan decided to wait until they reached the activity center and observe the symptoms of the other patients who had taken their medicine before making a decision.

When he stepped into the activity center, Li Xuan looked up at the clock hanging there.

7:45.

Just like yesterday, to the second.

The number of people in the hall was about the same as yesterday too.

Li Xuan sat in the same spot as yesterday and watched the entrance to the activity center.

Before long, he saw the five-man board-game group come in, and a few minutes later, Li Ruyao also entered the activity center under a nurse’s escort.

The five-man board-game group all looked heavy-faced, and Li Ruyao was even more visibly panicked.

Looks like their bodies had started to go wrong too.

Seeing Li Ruyao standing at the doorway, craning her neck around as if she were looking for someone, Li Xuan waved at her.

Li Ruyao saw him and ran over in a rush.

"Li Xuan... I... there’s something growing on my stomach... take a look for me... what do I do... what do I do..."

Seeing Li Xuan, Li Ruyao seemed to see a lifesaver, and as she spoke she tried to lift her shirt.

Li Xuan hurriedly grabbed her hand.

Fortunately, Li Ruyao hadn’t spoken loudly enough to draw the other patients over.

He pulled Li Ruyao over to the wall and sat her down, using his body and the table to block the angle from the others’ line of sight before he lifted her shirt slightly.

Li Ruyao’s skin was very fair and tender. There was no extra flesh on her small belly, and her slim waist looked nothing like what a woman in her thirties should have; instead, she seemed more like an eighteen-year-old girl.

But now, on that delicate waist that could almost be wrapped with one hand, a flesh-colored tentacle the size of a finger had grown.

"Is it only in this one place?" Li Xuan asked.

"Mm!"

Li Ruyao was so anxious she looked close to tears.

Li Xuan rolled up his own sleeve and let Li Ruyao see the eye on his arm.

"You too..." Li Ruyao covered her mouth in alarm, then quickly caught on. "Is it because we didn’t take the medicine, so..."

"Yeah." Li Xuan nodded, comforting Li Ruyao as he said, "I’m guessing there’s some kind of contamination in this hospital. The medicine can resist it, or at least slow it down, but taking it probably comes with other problems too."

"But... but I don’t want to turn into a monster with these disgusting things growing all over me... Li Xuan... maybe... maybe we should just take the medicine..."

"Yaoyao, listen to me." Li Xuan gently took Li Ruyao’s hands in his own and deliberately used a more intimate way of addressing her. "Have you noticed those patients who took the medicine yesterday?"

"Them? What about them?" Li Ruyao asked, still unsettled.

Li Xuan pointed toward the area where the patients were gathered.

"Before they took the medicine yesterday, I observed the patients here."

"About one-third of them showed a tendency toward irritability, and another third were far too quiet."

"The remaining third were normal people like you and me, probably pulled into whatever happened at this hospital."

"But today, there are more of the overly quiet patients."

Li Xuan pointed at the large number of patients sitting there blankly.

"Right now, only about one-fifth are irritable, while the quiet ones have risen to around three-fifths."

"Do you want to end up like them, turned into an idiot and stuck here for the rest of your life?"

Li Ruyao quickly shook her head.

"Then trust me. I’ll take you out of here. Be good, okay?" Li Xuan patted the back of Li Ruyao’s hand and finally managed to calm the woman down.

While the doctor who handed out the medicine still hadn’t arrived, Li Xuan told Li Ruyao to wait there for him, and then walked over to the buzz-cut man and his group.

"Bro, want to talk?"

Before the buzz-cut man could respond, Li Xuan plopped down beside him.

The buzz-cut man signaled to his underlings, and they spread out, doing their best to keep the two of them separated from the others.

"Went to the grocery store yesterday?" the buzz-cut man asked, eyeing Li Xuan.

"Yeah, I did." Li Xuan didn’t plan to keep testing the waters. He got straight to the point. "I got hold of the hospital map."

The buzz-cut man froze for a moment, and then joy flashed across his face.

He glanced nervously left and right, then lowered his voice and leaned toward Li Xuan. "How is it? Does it show a way out?"

"I haven’t had time to look yet." Li Xuan also lowered his voice. "Let’s cooperate. How about it? I’ve got the map, and your board game can run deductions. If we work together, we can find a way out sooner."

"How do you know my board game can run deductions?" The buzz-cut man frowned.

Li Xuan didn’t hide it. He told him straight out about how, yesterday, he had asked Li Ruyao to lure Zhou Hang into revealing information.

After all, if the two sides were going to cooperate, this would be found out by the buzz-cut man sooner or later. Rather than let it become a problem later, it was better to say it now and show his sincerity.

"Damn it, what a dumbass who loses his soul the second he sees a woman!"

Li Xuan glanced at the buzz-cut man, who was cursing under his breath, and didn’t mention that yesterday it had been the buzz-cut man who first groped Li Ruyao’s ass.

After thinking for a while, the buzz-cut man said to Li Xuan, "I want to see the map first. Otherwise, how do I know you’re not lying to me?"

"No!"

Li Xuan refused flatly, leaving no room to negotiate. "The map is my bargaining chip for working with you! If I show it to you, you memorize it and then kick me out, what then?"

"Then what do you want to do?"

"Let me join the board game. When we’re running deductions, I’ll take the lead. Once we find the way out, I can lead you through it once, or find a way to make a copy of the map for you!"

The buzz-cut man thought it over briefly, then looked at Li Xuan.

"Deal!"

The moment the two of them reached an agreement, the doctor and nurses started handing out the medicine.

Li Xuan strolled back to Li Ruyao and took her to line up with him.

After the doctor and nurses left, Li Xuan went to the bathroom just like yesterday and made himself vomit.

But this time, after he was done, he didn’t leave right away. Instead, he took the map out from inside his shirt and examined it carefully.

Li Xuan hadn’t told the truth to the buzz-cut man.

It really was a hospital map, but only of the comprehensive building, the very building Li Xuan and the others were in now. It wasn’t a map of the entire hospital.

And the map was far more complicated than Li Xuan had imagined.

Most importantly, it only showed the floor plan. There were no notes explaining the various departments or rooms.

In other words, Li Xuan would have to search them one by one before he could know what each room was for.

Still, fortunately, Li Xuan quickly found the floor plan for this level by comparing it with the layout of the activity center.

After a careful look, he ran the floor plan for this level through his mind once, then put the map back inside his shirt and opened the door to go out.

Li Ruyao was standing at the bathroom door, still hesitating over whether she should throw up the medicine.

Li Xuan didn’t urge her.

He had already said everything he needed to say. How she chose was her own business.

Respect other people’s choices and put down the useless urge to help.

If you keep making choices for other people, they might not only fail to appreciate it, they may even end up hating you for it.

After all five of the buzz-cut man’s people had gone through the bathroom in turn, Li Ruyao finally made up her mind and went inside.

The buzz-cut man gave Li Xuan a signal, then led his underlings to sit down at a table and wait for Li Xuan to join them.

Li Ruyao came out pretty quickly today, only a few minutes later. It was obvious she was worried that if she dawdled too long, Li Xuan would lose patience waiting outside and leave on his own.

After all, right now she was relying on Li Xuan one-sidedly, and she didn’t dare throw any female temper at him.

Li Xuan also had no interest in comforting her further. His patience with adult women had always been limited; only when he wanted to get them into bed was he willing to coddle them carefully. At other times, it all depended on his mood.

And right now, Li Xuan clearly wasn’t in the mood to take care of Li Ruyao.

He walked in front, Li Ruyao behind him, and the two of them strolled over to the table where the buzz-cut man’s group was sitting.

The buzz-cut man clearly hadn’t revealed that Li Ruyao and Li Xuan were on the same side.

His underlings still thought Li Xuan had used some kind of method to win over such a stunning beauty in just one day.

Their envious, jealous, and resentful expressions said everything about how they felt.

As for Zhou Hang, he kept looking back and forth between Li Xuan and Li Ruyao, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t bring himself to.

Li Ruyao, on the other hand, didn’t dare look at Zhou Hang at all. Although Li Xuan had already told her on the way over about his cooperation with the buzz-cut man, and about how he had asked her to get information out of Zhou Hang, she still wasn’t thick-skinned enough to act like nothing had happened and sit at the same table with him the very next day.

So she simply tucked her head into Li Xuan’s chest.

Li Xuan took the chance to wrap an arm around Li Ruyao’s soft waist, mainly to stake his claim and keep them from getting any ideas they shouldn’t have.

"Ready to start?" the buzz-cut man asked as he spread the board game out on the table, placed several little figures of different colors in front of everyone, and pulled a sixteen-sided die from his pocket.

"Explain the rules first," Li Xuan said while studying the game board.

The buzz-cut man organized his thoughts, then spoke.

"Once the game starts, the player enters the game. The board turns into the environment you’re currently in. You can do anything, and it won’t affect reality."

"Only one player and one host can play at a time. A game lasts about ten minutes. Each person can host only once per day, but players can play repeatedly. When time runs out, when the player dies, or when an event that is guaranteed to cause death is triggered, the game ends."

"Every minute, the host has to roll the die once and trigger an event."

"A roll of 5 or below is a normal event. A roll above 5 and up to 10 is a dangerous event. A roll above 10 and up to 15 is a highly dangerous event. A roll of 16 is a lucky event."

"That’s the game rule set I worked out after playing yesterday."

After hearing the buzz-cut man out, Li Xuan briefly considered taking out the map and letting him see what the rooms and departments on it were actually for.

After all, the man had already played the game at least five times yesterday, so he definitely had some understanding of this floor.

But Li Xuan quickly abandoned the idea.

He couldn’t guarantee that if the buzz-cut man learned he was carrying the map on him, he wouldn’t try to snatch it by force.

After all, the other side had five people. He only had one.

Li Ruyao was completely ignored by Li Xuan. It was already good enough if she didn’t drag him down.

Li Xuan asked the buzz-cut man one question: "Yesterday, during the deductions, did you ever leave the activity center?"

The buzz-cut man grinned. "I tried five times, and on the last one I found a way to get out."

"What way?"

"Arson!"