Chapter 5: Speculation

After the neat-looking young man went into the restroom, Li Xuan watched the timing and walked over to the few people waiting outside.

As soon as they saw Li Xuan approach, all four of them fixed him with wary eyes.

"Got a minute to talk?" Li Xuan said with a smile to the buzz-cut man.

"No way," the buzz-cut man said with a cold laugh. "The guy who talked to you yesterday had his head smashed open by the aide. The price of talking to you is too high."

So that was it. No wonder these people were so hostile toward him.

It looked like yesterday's cafeteria incident had drawn a lot of attention.

Li Xuan noticed that when the buzz-cut man spoke, the others stood silently behind him without saying a word.

Looks like the buzz-cut was their leader.

"We're all trapped here to find a way to survive. If we trade useful information, it increases everyone's odds of living, doesn't it?"

The buzz-cut man wavered a little after hearing that.

After all, judging from what happened in the cafeteria yesterday, Li Xuan wasn't stupid. He might really have something useful.

In a bizarre event like this, the more information you had, the higher your chances of clearing it and staying alive.

Things like a fool's luck never happened here.

The consequence of ignorance could only be stumbling blindly toward death.

Thinking of that, the buzz-cut man asked, "So what do you know?"

Hooked.

Li Xuan was secretly delighted, but his face didn't change. He turned and pointed toward a quiet corner.

"It's less crowded over there. Let's talk there."

Without waiting for the buzz-cut man's reply, he turned and walked off.

"Boss, Zhou Hang still hasn't come out yet," one of the four said in a low voice beside the buzz-cut man.

"He's not three years old. He won't get lost in this short amount of time!" the buzz-cut man snapped at his underling impatiently. "This activity center isn't that big. You think he can't find us?"

Seeing the ugly look on the boss's face, the underling shut up.

"Come on, let's follow him and see what this kid is up to."

Li Xuan stood by a corner of the wall for a while before the buzz-cut man came over with his three underlings.

"Spit it out. It's quiet enough here. Say what you have to say already!" The buzz-cut man signaled his men. The four of them spread out, neatly boxing Li Xuan into the corner and sealing off every route of escape.

"If you dare play us, don't blame us for being rude!"

Li Xuan ignored the buzz-cut man's deliberately menacing expression and said calmly, "That tabletop game of yours, you got it after leaving the ward last night, right?"

The buzz-cut man's eyes narrowed. "What does that have to do with you?"

"Nothing. Just asking."

He got it right.

The first time Li Xuan saw them playing that tabletop game, something about it felt off.

It was normal for a psychiatric hospital to have chess. It was also normal to have military chess.

But he'd never heard of psychiatric patients playing tabletop games.

Especially not a tabletop role-playing game.

That left only one possibility.

They had brought the game in themselves.

Li Xuan remembered that when he had suddenly appeared in the hospital, everything except the clothes on his back had vanished.

From what he had observed, everyone else was the same.

That meant this tabletop game hadn't been brought in from outside. It had been obtained from inside the hospital.

And there was only one chance to get something like that: after the door lock mysteriously failed at midnight, they had left the ward and taken it from somewhere else in the hospital.

At first, that had only been Li Xuan's guess.

But he hadn't expected that a simple bluff would make this buzz-cut man slip up so easily.

It seemed the midnight hospital wasn't just dangerous. It also held opportunities.

The only question was what special use this tabletop game had.

And judging from the buzz-cut man's reaction to a single question, he probably wasn't going to tell Li Xuan.

No idea whether Li Ruyao could dig anything useful out on her end.

"You can ask, but what information are you going to trade for it?"

The buzz-cut man looked unhappy.

Information? What the hell information did he have?

Li Xuan only knew that the rules had to be followed, and that the medicine the hospital handed out had a problem. But those were things the buzz-cut man obviously already knew.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye toward the restroom. Li Ruyao had already made contact with Zhou Hang, who had just come out.

He needed to buy her some time.

But what should he say...

Li Xuan gathered his thoughts and said to the buzz-cut man, "The staff in this hospital are a problem."

"Pfft." The buzz-cut man snorted in contempt. "You think we need you to tell us that? I can see that shit with my ass."

"Hahaha."

The little crew behind him broke into laughter.

Didn't expect these guys to have a sense of humor.

Li Xuan didn't rush to argue. Instead, he took the patient handbook out of the pocket of his hospital gown.

"Can you read the words on here?"

The buzz-cut man frowned. He had one too, of course he could read it, but his instincts told him that what Li Xuan wanted to say wasn't that simple.

"If you have something to say, say it. Stop beating around the bush. I hate people like you most, always speaking in riddles like a damn son of a bitch."

Li Xuan glanced at him, then slowly folded the handbook and slipped it back into his pocket.

"Aren't you curious why we can understand the writing in this hospital, but we can't understand what the staff are saying?"

The buzz-cut man froze. He had never really thought about it before. Now that Li Xuan mentioned it, it really was strange.

"Could it be because they're speaking in a dialect?" one of the underlings blurted out.

"Impossible." Li Xuan shook his head. "Even if every employee in this hospital were local, how would they make sure every patient here was local too?"

"Even if all the patients were local, there are still different accents and dialects from place to place. How would they be sure the patients could understand the dialect they use? For the sake of safety, wouldn't it be more convenient for them to communicate with patients in a common language?"

The buzz-cut man understood what Li Xuan was getting at.

"You're saying the staff in this hospital can't speak Mandarin, and they can't understand us either?" But he curled his lip. "What kind of useful information is that? Isn't that basically the same as saying nothing?"

"No. I think they can understand what we say, and they can read the writing too. The problem isn't with them. It's with us, because we're the ones who came later!"

As he spoke, Li Xuan drew a deep breath. In that instant, one word flashed through his mind.

Identity recognition.

Ever since he'd seen the patient handbook, he'd been wondering whether everyone in this hospital had rules they had to follow based on their job.

Patients, nurses, doctors, aides, cooks.

If Li Xuan wasn't mistaken, there should be a director above them.

Could it be that different jobs had to follow different rules, and different identities saw different things?

At first, that idea had only been a vague concept in Li Xuan's mind. But as he racked his brains trying to bluff the buzz-cut man, this idea had become clearer and clearer.

And along with it, Li Xuan thought of two other things.

Why normal doctors and nurses didn't appear at night, while the aides could still move around at night.

And why hearing a dog bark was dangerous, while the aides wore dog-head masks.

What exactly was the connection between those two things?

"We? What's wrong with us?" Seeing Li Xuan standing there in a daze, the buzz-cut man frowned and interrupted his train of thought.

Li Xuan organized his words and said to him, "This is still just a theory for now. I can tell you, but in return, you have to tell me where you got that tabletop game."

The buzz-cut man and his three underlings exchanged smiles, then answered Li Xuan cheerfully, "No problem. Deal!"

Huh? That easy?

Li Xuan had expected him to hesitate or throw in some conditions, but he hadn't expected the buzz-cut man to agree so readily. Especially with that smug, schadenfreude-filled grin, which made Li Xuan feel like there was definitely something fishy about this.

But the words were already out. It was too late to take them back, especially with four people blocking him in front.

"I suspect we're not patients. We're test subjects!"

"Test subjects?"

Li Xuan's claim shocked the buzz-cut man and his underlings, but they didn't seem to fully believe it. "How did you come to that conclusion?"

"After dinner last night, when they checked your bodies, did the female doctor jerk you off?" Li Xuan asked.

Before the buzz-cut man could answer, his underlings all broke into sleazy grins.

Obviously, Li Xuan hadn't been the only one forced to get a hand job from the female doctor yesterday.

"You know, that female doctor wasn't just sexy as hell in what she wore, her technique was amazing too. Yesterday she jerked me off until I came, got hard again, came again. She got her face and body covered in cum. The whores I paid for before weren't even half as slutty as her."

"Keep bragging, you jackoff. Could you even cum that much? It was probably all watery as hell."

The fat man who had spoken was mocked by his companions until his face turned red. The others laughed softly, and the atmosphere between them somehow eased up.

Once the laughter died down, Li Xuan continued, "She collected your semen afterward too, right? And on the first day, did you see the medical chart the nurse was holding?"

"Besides our information, there was a separate column on it."

"Inspiration."

"Why would a medical treatment test a patient's inspiration?"

"So I suspect this hospital isn't here to treat patients at all. It's treating them like some kind of experimental subject. These experiments involve bizarre things that distort people's perception and behavior."

"I even suspect the staff in this hospital used to be patients themselves!"

"They transformed from patients!"

The buzz-cut man was a little stunned by Li Xuan's bold speculation, but at the same time he felt there was some truth to it. He took a deep breath and spent a long time unable to fully digest the information.

His underlings, meanwhile, were even more at a loss, looking at one another.

"Now it's your turn to tell me where that tabletop game came from."

Seeing that the buzz-cut man still hadn't responded for a long time, Li Xuan reminded him.

The buzz-cut man let out a breath. There was no longer the same ferocity in his eyes when he looked at Li Xuan, only a trace of respect.

"We got that tabletop game last night after the door lock failed. We traded for it in a little shop on the fourth floor of the ward building, all the way at the end of the corridor."

"A shop on the fourth floor of the ward building?" Li Xuan found it unbelievable.

"Yeah." The buzz-cut man nodded. "But be careful. The hospital at night is dangerous, and the shop owner is extremely sly. His store has everything, but you can only trade things for it."

"What did you trade for the tabletop game?" Li Xuan asked, curious.

The buzz-cut man bared a set of sinister white teeth at him.

"We traded lives for it."

...

The buzz-cut man left with his underlings. Not long after, the doors of the activity center opened again, and several nurses pushed in trolleys loaded with sandwich bread.

Tch. If only he could have some rice porridge. He really wasn't used to eating Western breakfast.

Li Xuan bit at the sweet-and-salty sandwich absentmindedly as he thought.

Li Ruyao, holding her sandwich in both hands and taking tiny bites, quietly sneaked over.

Probably because she hadn't eaten anything last night, Li Ruyao was starving. Even though the sandwich looked unappetizing to Li Xuan, she finished it completely in no time.

"I found out a lot!" Li Ruyao said, her eyes curved with a little smug pride.

"Yeah? What did you find out?" Li Xuan turned to look at her.

Li Ruyao looked up at him, as if waiting for something.

But Li Xuan didn't seem to catch on at all.

She could only say in disappointment, "That little boy said the tabletop game was something they secretly slipped out of the ward for last night and traded for on the fourth floor of the ward building. That game has some special ability. By taking part in the game and playing a role, the players can infer events that will happen over a certain period of time. It's not one hundred percent accurate, but most of the time it's very accurate."

"He also said they originally had seven people, but two died when they were trading for the game at the shop owner's place. I asked him how they died, but he wouldn't say."

"Also, that pill really does have a problem. He said they had used the game to predict the consequences of taking the medicine, and the game directly showed that they would fail the level."

"And he said he's really afraid of their boss. Not just him, the others are afraid too. He told me to be careful and not get caught alone by their boss."

"That's all he knew."

There were some things Li Ruyao didn't say.

For example, under her gentle coaxing, Zhou Hang even told her how many girlfriends he'd had.

But that kind of thing didn't interest Li Xuan, and not even her, so there was no need to mention it.

It was pretty much the same as what the buzz-cut man had told him, so it looked like he hadn't lied.

Li Xuan thought.

Besides, that tabletop game was really good. It could actually infer and predict things. With that, they could avoid a lot of danger.

It looked like if the door lock failed again tonight, he would need to go out and take a look around.

Looking at Li Ruyao, who seemed a little disappointed, Li Xuan thought for a moment and patted her head.

"Good work."

"Hey! That's annoying. I'm not a child. You messed up my hair!" Li Ruyao shot him a reproachful look, and a smile finally surfaced on her face.

Yeah, women were like that. On one hand they said they weren't children, and on the other hand they wanted men to treat them like children.

After the sandwiches were handed out, the nurses left again and did not bring the patients back to their wards.

Looks like the morning was free time.

The five-person tabletop game group found another place and started playing again. During that time, the little boy named Zhou Hang would occasionally look up, searching for Li Ruyao.

Li Xuan found a quiet spot and lay his head on the table to rest with his eyes closed.

Since he'd decided he would be heading out tonight, getting enough rest in advance now was necessary.

But his mind was a mess, and as soon as he closed his eyes, all sorts of random thoughts came flooding in.

After a while, Li Xuan suddenly felt a warm body lean against his side, followed by a faint scent of natural fragrance.

He didn't need to open his eyes to know it was Li Ruyao.

That woman probably hadn't slept well all night from fear, and now that she'd settled beside him, she could finally fall asleep.

Come to think of it, he hadn't bathed for a day or two, and his own body was starting to smell a little sour with sweat. So why did this woman still smell so damn good?

Lost in random thoughts, Li Xuan actually fell asleep like that.

When he woke again, it was lunchtime.

Li Xuan followed the crowd to the cafeteria under the nurses' lead.

Li Ruyao was still half-asleep and groggy. Without Li Xuan holding her the whole way, she probably would have gotten lost.

When he got his meal, Li Xuan still chose the same dishes as yesterday, but he also took the chance to observe what the five tabletop-game players were eating.

Their selections were pretty varied, and they didn't seem short on fish.

So the food should be fine.

After lunch, the nurses brought the patients back to their rooms one by one.

When Li Xuan left, Li Ruyao tugged at the hem of his shirt, her face full of unease and reluctance.

Li Xuan understood. Li Ruyao might not necessarily have any special feelings for him. It was probably just that being alone in such a dangerous environment had left her terrified and uneasy, and under that fear, she'd developed a kind of suspension-bridge effect toward Li Xuan and taken him as her support.

He patted her hand and comforted her properly for a while.

For now, Li Ruyao was the only person he could trust. Even if he wasn't interested in her body, he would still comfort her properly.

As long as Li Ruyao was more useful than she was a burden, Li Xuan wouldn't discard her casually.

Back in the ward, Li Xuan forced himself to fall asleep.

When he woke up, he felt refreshed and full of energy.

Just in time, it was dinner.

After dinner came, as usual, the female doctor's hand-job session.

To avoid being drained of too much energy by the female doctor, Li Xuan used every trick he could think of to imagine the gorgeous female nurse with her huge chest and plump ass as a hideous, fat Mouse-type tank.

His efforts weren't wasted.

After the female doctor jerked him off once, Li Xuan went soft, and no matter how hard she worked at it, even to the point where she seemed ready to put his dick in her mouth and give him a blowjob, Li Xuan still couldn't get hard again.

"Gibberish?"

The disappointed female doctor packed up her things and left with the nurse after locking the door.

Li Xuan quietly lay back down on the bed, waiting for night to fall.