Chapter 2: Here, There Is No Mercy

Two female nurses marched ahead of and behind Li Xuan as if escorting a prisoner, and on the quiet, dim corridor the only sound was the three of their footsteps.

At first Li Xuan tried to strike up a conversation with the two nurses, but no matter what he said, they ignored him completely. In truth, even if they had responded, it would have been useless, because he couldn't understand a word they said, and Li Xuan's words didn't seem to mean anything to them either.

Since he couldn't chat his way into information, Li Xuan could only look around to see whether he could spot anything useful.

But he was disappointed.

The whole corridor was no different from an ordinary hospital hallway.

The floor and walls were tiled from end to end; on both sides were patient rooms lined up one after another, and the overhead lights cast a harsh glare. The air was thick with the pungent smell of disinfectant.

Following the nurses downstairs and turning several corners, the three of them finally arrived at a spacious lobby. The two nurses stopped at the entrance and would not go any farther. From the expressions on their faces, if Li Xuan had guessed right, they were telling him to go in.

Li Xuan peeked inside. The lobby was already bustling, filled with many patients in the same hospital gowns as him; at a glance, there were probably around a hundred of them.

On the way here, Li Xuan had already quietly memorized how many steps he had taken and how many turns he had made.

If the layout of this hospital wasn't much different from the hospitals he had been to before, then the lobby he was in now should be in the neighboring building, southwest of his room.

He had done this because the patient handbook stated more than once that if danger occurred, he had to return to his room immediately.

Li Xuan didn't want to actually run into danger and then discover he couldn't find his way back to the ward. That would be a damned unjust way to die.

Li Xuan walked into the lobby. A few patients near the door glanced at him before quickly looking away.

Li Xuan ignored them and instead used his eyes to study the many patients inside the lobby one by one.

There were quite a few patients in the lobby, but they could roughly be divided into three types.

One type was frenzied, spouting complete nonsense. Another sat or stood quietly and ignored anyone who approached. The third type was the one that truly caught Li Xuan's interest.

Most of them sat upright, tense and wary, yet they couldn't help looking around. Now and then they would exchange a few words with the person beside them, but as soon as anyone else noticed, they would immediately fall silent and carefully scan their surroundings, only speaking again after quite a while.

If Li Xuan hadn't guessed wrong, he wasn't the only one pulled into this bizarre incident. The third type in the lobby should be, like him, people who had entered this hospital not long ago.

He just didn't know whether the first two types were patients who had already been in this hospital, or people who had failed to escape.

But Li Xuan had no intention of immediately approaching the others who had been dragged into this incident.

He wasn't some hot-blooded youth ignorant of the world. He knew all too well how vicious people could be. Before he had enough information, rushing over to talk to someone might just make you a stepping stone for their own test run if they had bad intentions.

Besides, there was something else in this lobby that interested Li Xuan.

"This cafeteria is intended to provide good service to all diners. Please observe the following rules while in the cafeteria:"

"1: The cafeteria is open only from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m."

"2: It is forbidden to take food out of the cafeteria in any way. Offenders bear the consequences themselves."

"3: No loud noise during meals. The first violation will earn a warning; the second will be punished."

"4: If anyone faints or vomits during a meal, immediately call a doctor. The doctor will handle everything, and no one else may leave the cafeteria before the meal is over."

"5: Do not go near the kitchen!"

Unlike the long-winded patient rules, the cafeteria rules were brief and clear. Apart from being a little harsh, there was nothing else off about them.

Clang, clang, clang!

A rhythmic bell rang out through the lobby. The noisy patients immediately fell silent. The frenzied ones stopped shouting and lined up quietly like obedient children, and even the overly quiet patients stood up and automatically formed a queue behind them.

Li Xuan followed suit and picked a line that looked neither too long nor too short.

Standing in front of him was a woman.

She looked to be around thirty, the age when a woman was at her most fully ripe. Likewise, her body gave off the sweet scent of a woman at her peak, and the loose hospital gown she wore in the same style as Li Xuan's could barely hide her wasp waist and plump hips. Her long wine-red hair, carefully permed and dyed, hung casually over her shoulders.

Li Xuan was half a head taller than the woman. Looking past her shoulder, he could faintly see her full tits threatening to burst through her clothes.

And her lovely side profile, together with skin as white as milk, showed that she had certainly lived a life of comfort. She was no ordinary married woman.

The woman seemed to sense Li Xuan's gaze. She turned back in surprise, as if trying to decide whether Li Xuan, like her, had just been swept up in this strange incident. Li Xuan smiled at her, and she unconsciously returned a gentle smile of her own. But the next moment, the woman's cheeks flushed red, and she quickly turned her head away.

Damn, what a disappointment!

Li Xuan helplessly patted the tent in his crotch.

Not wearing underwear was cool and breezy, sure, but that had one drawback: any little movement would be noticed by others.

And come to think of it, wasn't this hospital's patient gown a little off? It was made so thin. Maybe it was fine for a man like him, but for the beautiful married woman in front of him, that gown clung to her skin like a second layer, especially around that peachy ass wrapped tightly in fabric.

Tsk, tsk. If he spread her two cheeks with his hands, Li Xuan figured he could probably see the woman's plump mound through the cloth.

Damn it, it was all because since his rebirth he had never touched a woman once. Now, the moment he saw one, he couldn't help thinking in that direction. Just a little temptation and his cock would swell until it hurt.

Thinking of random nonsense, Li Xuan and the woman quickly reached the front of the line.

Li Xuan glanced ahead past the woman. Good, the line he had joined was for serving food, not for volunteering to become ingredients.

The woman fidgeted for quite a while before finally and reluctantly ordering a plate of plain greens with almost no oil or meat. Then she took her tray, with a small portion of rice, the greens, and a bowl of kelp soup, and left.

It was Li Xuan's turn.

"What would you like?"

asked the server, who wore a greasy apron.

Li Xuan looked through the glass. The dishes inside were quite varied, with both meat and vegetables, and they looked rather appetizing.

But what Li Xuan was really looking at was not the food. It was the server behind the food counter, most of whose face was hidden by the curtain hanging down from above.

Damn it. The cook had a bear's head!

Thinking of how long the woman in front of him had been dithering, Li Xuan had first assumed she was simply too pampered to eat the cafeteria food. But now it seemed possible she, like him, had realized that the cook wasn't human.

Li Xuan took a deep breath. He turned to look left and right at the patients getting their food, but none of them seemed to notice anything strange.

After a slight hesitation, Li Xuan chose the same meal as the woman.

A serving of greens, a bowl of rice, and a bowl of kelp soup.

Tray in hand, Li Xuan searched for the woman. It took him a good while before he spotted her sitting at a table in the corner.

Li Xuan found a seat not far off to the woman's side.

"Beauty, mind if we share a table?"

Two lecherous-looking men grinned as they sat down beside the woman. She frowned, clearly sensing their ill intentions. She picked up her tray and was about to look for another seat, but the man beside her reached out and pressed a hand to her shoulder, giving her a sidelong look. "Come on, beauty, don't be rude."

The woman brushed his hand away in disgust and opened her mouth to speak.

"I'd advise you not to raise your voice too much," the sleazy man said with a smug grin, leaning his face close to hers. "You've read the cafeteria rules, haven't you? Making a loud racket will get you punished."

The woman's face stiffened. She clearly knew that rule, but she also couldn't stand the two sleazy men beside her. If she swallowed her anger and put up with it like this, what those two would do next was something anyone could guess.

Just as the woman clenched her fists and hesitated over whether to try calling for the attendants, she caught sight of Li Xuan sitting slightly behind and to the side.

Seeing the woman's suddenly delighted expression, Li Xuan cursed under his breath.

He had indeed planned to help her.

Not out of any knight-in-shining-armor impulse.

Both the patient rules and the cafeteria rules demanded that patients obey the rules, but neither said a word about what would happen if you broke them.

Li Xuan had originally planned to set a trap for someone he didn't like, have them violate a rule, and see exactly how severe the punishment was.

Only after he knew what sort of punishment rule-breaking actually brought down on a person could he decide whether to obey the rules or treat them like nothing at all.

He had planned to do it discreetly, but now those two sleazy men had already followed the woman's gaze and shifted their attention to Li Xuan.

Li Xuan gave the two lechers a sycophantic smile, signaling that he didn't want to get involved.

The two sleazy men looked him over from head to toe, apparently very satisfied with how tactful Li Xuan was. So they turned back around and prepared to keep harassing the woman.

After all, the woman really was beautiful enough. On top of that, they'd already been stimulated by the flirtatiously dressed nurses earlier, and now they were truly burning with lust.

They couldn't touch the female nurses, and they didn't dare. But this beautiful married woman in front of them was clearly an ordinary person like them, and they had no intention of letting her go.

That face, those tits, that ass, that delicate skin, those pretty brows and eyes.

Before entering this bizarre incident, a woman this beautiful would have been an absolute top-tier beauty you might not even get to see in ordinary life. Now that she was right in front of them, the sleazy men felt they absolutely had to find a way to fuck her, no matter what.

If they could get their dicks inside her sweet little pussy, the two sleazy men felt they would gladly give up ten years of their lives.

The woman turned back with a disappointed look, her pitiful expression truly enough to make anyone's heart ache.

Li Xuan curled his lip and lifted the kelp soup for a sip. It was a little hot.

Perfect.

Taking advantage of the fact that no one around him was paying attention, he suddenly lifted the bowl and splashed the soup over the sleazy man beside the woman.

"Aaah!!!"

The scalding soup drenched sleazy man A from head to face. His forehead and cheeks instantly turned red, and steaming broth ran down his neck, making him flail and claw at his clothes in pain.

While everyone was distracted by sleazy man A's reaction, Li Xuan quickly picked up the soup bowl from the table beside him and poured half of that bowl into his own.

The owner of the bowl only looked at Li Xuan. Li Xuan pressed his palms together and made a pleading gesture.

The man lowered his head and said nothing.

"You fucking asshole!"

As soon as sleazy man B saw his companion being attacked, he immediately concluded that it had to be Li Xuan's doing!

He rose to his feet in rage and picked up the stool under him, about to smash it into Li Xuan's head. Li Xuan kept his face calm, but his feet were already ready to dodge at any moment.

One, two, three.

He had only counted to three in his head when the stool still hadn't come down. Somehow, a man wearing a dog-head mask had appeared beside the two sleazy men.

"Orderly, it was him causing trouble. He splashed all the soup on my head, that's why I shouted. My companion was only trying to help me. It's got nothing to do with us!"

Seeing the dog-mask man appear, sleazy man A, his face burned bright red from the scalding, actually endured the pain and didn't even dare cry out anymore. But he obviously didn't want to be the one to suffer, so he dragged the dog-mask man over and pointed at Li Xuan while trying to argue his case.

So he was the orderly?

The dog-mask man sized Li Xuan up, and Li Xuan sized him up as well.

A powerfully built frame, almost two meters tall, dressed in a dark blue security uniform, with a baton hanging at his waist and a walkie-talkie clipped to his chest.

As the orderly walked up to Li Xuan, the pressure from that massive body made Li Xuan's heart skip a beat.

Fuck, he was terrifying. One punch from him and he'd probably be dead, right?

Nervous as he was, Li Xuan still forced himself to stand and point at the bowl on his tray that held half a bowl of egg-drop soup. "It wasn't me. You can compare the soup on his body with what's in my bowl and see if they're the same."

The dog-headed orderly lowered his head and carefully inspected the soup in Li Xuan's bowl, then looked at the seaweed hanging from the sleazy man's head.

"It wasn't you, then who the hell was it? Fuck, still trying to fool people? Orderly, it was definitely him, he was the one who splashed it!"

Sleazy man A clearly hadn't expected Li Xuan to be prepared already. He couldn't swallow this humiliation!

The dog-headed orderly gave sleazy man A a cold look, and sleazy man A's face went pale. He immediately shut up and didn't dare keep speaking loudly.

Then the dog-headed orderly strode over to the serving window. Along the way, the patients who had been standing up to watch the fun all hurriedly made way for him.

"Grrr-grrr?" Once he reached the window, the dog-headed orderly muttered a few words to the server, then pointed at Li Xuan. The server at the counter stuck out a huge bear's head from behind the curtain, seemingly thinking it over carefully.

Just as Li Xuan's heart had climbed into his throat and he was wondering how to clean this up, the bear-headed man shook his head.

Li Xuan's heart settled back down.

Good. It looked like the server was handling too many people, so the bear-headed man probably couldn't remember what soup he had ladled out.

"How is that possible? It was him! It had to be him! If not him, then who else could it be!"

Sleazy man A clearly understood the meaning of the server's shake of the head. In exasperation, he pointed at Li Xuan, unwilling to let himself be scalded by hot soup for nothing.

The dog-headed orderly took three quick steps and reached sleazy man A.

He drew the baton hanging from his waist and swung it at sleazy man A's head.

Smack!

The sound was like a watermelon being smashed open.

Sleazy man A, who had just been raging one moment earlier, toppled straight over, while sleazy man B standing beside him was splattered with red blood mist and gray-white brain matter. His face turned deathly pale, and his legs trembled uncontrollably.

The woman, meanwhile, had already hidden behind Li Xuan. She pressed her face against Li Xuan's back, shaking all over.

The entire cafeteria fell into a silence like death.

But the dog-headed orderly acted as if this were all just routine. He grabbed one leg of sleazy man A's corpse and dragged it out of the cafeteria like a dead dog.

The instant he stepped out of the cafeteria, two pink-clad female nurses who looked just like the ones who had brought Li Xuan here came in carrying a mop and a bucket, and washed away the blood and brain matter from the tables and the floor.

Even when the two beautiful nurses bent over and exposed great swathes of snowy breasts, nobody had the mind to look anymore.

A living life had just died so brutally and crudely before everyone's eyes.

The splatter of brains and blood had shocked everyone too much, leaving all of them shaken with terror from the orderlies.

This was the consequence of breaking the rules.

Death!