Chapter 6: The General Store

At midnight, the bell rang on cue.

Li Xuan climbed down from bed and pushed at the door.

It opened.

He peered out and looked around.

Just like yesterday, it was pitch-black.

The patient rules said he could find an orderly in any lit corridor, but the corridor outside Li Xuan's room had no lights at all.

Before leaving, Li Xuan glanced at the number on his room door.

10029.

Li Xuan remembered that Li Ruyao had said her room number was 10037.

The corridor was silent and desolate. It didn't need any extra horror piled on top of it; it was already enough to make his spine go cold.

Even though the rules said doctors and nurses would not appear at night, Li Xuan still tried to slow his steps as much as possible and cut down on the noise he made.

1, 2, 3, 4...

Li Xuan counted the doors one by one.

From his room to the stairwell, there were exactly nine rooms.

That meant the 9 in 10029 represented the ninth room on this floor.

So did the 2 mean the floor number?

To confirm his guess, when he reached the floor above, Li Xuan deliberately checked the number on the door.

10031.

As expected, his guess was correct.

Should he go see Li Ruyao?

Li Xuan quickly abandoned that thought.

Li Ruyao was beautiful enough, but she was still an adult woman, not the petite doll-like women he usually liked. Besides, he had real business to handle right now; chasing women could wait.

Continuing up the stairs, he reached the fourth floor.

Li Xuan stood in the stairwell and peered toward the ward area on the fourth floor.

It was no different from the second and third floors, just as pitch-black, with ward after ward lined up the same way.

It was too dark to see whether the general store the buzz-cut man had mentioned was really there.

And the hospital building was L-shaped. If he wanted to find out, he had to go in.

"So far I haven't found any lights anywhere. If something goes wrong, I definitely can't rely on the orderly. I can only get back to my room as fast as possible!"

"On the way up, the stairwell had four flights, twelve steps each. If anything happens, as long as I'm fast enough, I should be able to get downstairs within a minute. My room is the ninth one, right at the bend in the L, and running there should take about a minute too!"

In other words, as long as the other side couldn't catch him within two minutes, he could make it back to his room and escape danger.

But that was only the ideal scenario.

Taking a deep breath, Li Xuan headed deeper into the fourth floor.

Fortunately, he didn't run into any danger on the way.

But in the darkness, Li Xuan could feel someone, or something, covertly sizing him up.

Li Xuan looked back, and there was no one behind him.

Don't scare yourself. It was probably just a patient on the fourth floor hiding behind a door and watching him.

After reassuring himself, Li Xuan walked toward the back half of the L-shaped corridor.

"Hm?"

Standing at the corner of the L, Li Xuan frowned.

This side of the L was still nothing but a few ward doors shut tight.

But at the end of the corridor, a green sign reading "Emergency Exit" was glowing.

No need to think about it. That sign was definitely wrong.

Was this the place?

Or was it a trap?

Might as well try it. If something was wrong, he could just run. If it really came to it, everyone's curfew would be useless at night anyway, so he could just dive into any room he found!

He just didn't know whether hiding in someone else's ward counted as entering a safe zone.

Li Xuan pressed himself against the wall and inched toward the "Emergency Exit" sign, ready to bolt the moment anything felt wrong.

When he was only about three steps away, Li Xuan suddenly saw everything blur. On the wall beneath the sign, a wooden door abruptly appeared.

Li Xuan crept up quietly and tested the door with his fingers, giving it a push.

"Creak..."

The door opened.

Inside was a little shop crammed full of all kinds of goods.

Phew!

So this was it! Li Xuan let out a breath.

"Well, well, a rare visitor! What can I get you, young man?"

Just as Li Xuan was looking over the crowded shelves inside, the pile of junk suddenly burst apart, and a huge fat man squeezed out from behind it.

The man was fat as a pig, wearing a work suit covered in pockets, a fake smile stretched over a face so bloated it seemed nearly mashed together.

He looked exactly like the sort of mastermind villain you'd expect behind the scenes.

Li Xuan silently scoffed to himself.

"What do you sell here?"

"Oh, everything, young man. Anything and everything, as long as you can pay the price!"

The general store owner spread his hands toward Li Xuan, clearly very confident.

Hm? Everything?

Li Xuan raised an eyebrow.

"Then I want to buy something that can help me get out of the hospital. Do you sell that?"

"Believe me, young man!" the owner said with a smile. "You wouldn't want that thing."

Something stirred in Li Xuan. "Is that thing dangerous? Or is the way out of the hospital dangerous?"

The owner still smiled at him and said nothing.

Clearly, he didn't want to tell Li Xuan.

Li Xuan decided to change the question.

"Then do you have anything here that can uncover the truth behind the source of all the strange incidents in this hospital?"

"Of course. But you can't afford it." The owner rubbed his fingers together in front of Li Xuan. "That thing costs more than you can imagine."

"How much?"

Hearing that the owner had something that could let him clear the whole thing in one shot, Li Xuan was naturally unwilling to give up so easily.

"Very high." The owner spread his arms as far apart as they would go. "About this high."

That was no different from saying nothing.

Going on like this would just waste time.

Li Xuan rubbed his chin. He hadn't shaved in a few days, and a faint stubble was already growing there.

This owner knew a lot, and from that board game with deduction functions, the things he sold clearly weren't ordinary items either.

That meant the thing needed to buy from him was very likely not ordinary money.

Li Xuan remembered the buzz-cut man saying that the board game had been bought with human lives.

At first, Li Xuan thought he meant one of their companions had died before they reached the general store, and that was why he said it that way.

But now it looked like he had meant it literally.

Zhou Hang had told Li Ruyao that there had been seven of them at the start, which meant they had traded the lives of two living people for that board game.

But Li Xuan didn't plan to trade his own life for anything. He had already died once and knew better than anyone how precious life was.

Forget his life, he didn't want to lose even a single finger.

But he also didn't want to take such a huge risk leaving the room only to come back empty-handed.

Then suddenly, his fingers touched the patient rules in his pocket.

"What can I get in exchange for this?" Li Xuan spread open the patient rules and set them in front of the fat man.

The owner pinched the patient rules between two thick fingers and held them up to inspect.

"It's trash, but you're in luck. I happen to have some trash I haven't gotten around to dealing with yet. You can pick through it."

"But you can only take one."

The owner rummaged in one of the pockets of his work suit and put a few items in front of Li Xuan.

A half-used tube of lipstick, a broken key, a sheet torn in half that looked like a floor plan of some part of the hospital, and a fountain pen with no ink left in it.

As the owner had said, these things were literal trash.

Trash meant nothing of use.

Li Xuan wasn't stupid enough to think that the inkless pen would somehow be the one capable of adding rules to a note.

Li Xuan shook his head to show that none of these were what he wanted.

"Then there's nothing you can exchange."

The owner took the items back.

"I want to trade it for a copy of another profession's rules. Nurses, doctors, or orderlies, any of them will do!"

"No." The owner shook his head. "Your item isn't worth that price."

"But aren't they all the same? Just pieces of paper with words on them?"

Li Xuan refused to give up.

"No, no, no! They're completely different." The owner flatly rejected Li Xuan's words.

But his answer only confirmed Li Xuan's earlier guess about how identity worked here.

"What do I need to trade for the rules of another profession?"

Li Xuan didn't want to give up that quickly. He still intended to try.

The owner studied Li Xuan, as if thinking it over.

Then he rummaged through the clutter and pulled out a tarot deck.

"How about we play a game? If you win, I'll give you a chance. If you lose, you'll hand over those patient rules to me."

Li Xuan was about to agree when he suddenly changed course and asked, "What happens if I lose the patient rules?"

The owner gave a mysterious smile. "A result you won't like."

Damn it. Just a moment ago the owner had called his patient rules trash and offered him a pile of useless junk in exchange.

Li Xuan suspected the buzz-cut man and the others had probably been screwed over by this owner last night too. Two people had died for nothing, and that game was very likely not worth two lives.

After thinking it over, Li Xuan agreed.

"Then let's begin."

"The rules are simple."

The owner drew three cards from the tarot deck and placed one to Li Xuan's left, one to his right, and one in front of him.

Li Xuan looked at the faces of the cards.

These tarot cards were a little strange.

The faces on them were a nude petite adult woman holding a crystal ball, a beautiful knight in three-piece armor holding a longsword, and a nun in a high-slit fetish habit!

"Among these three cards, two are devils and one is an angel."

"The devils only tell lies, and the angel only tells the truth."

"You can ask them only one question."

"Find the devils and help the angel eliminate them."

Li Xuan frowned. Three cards? How were they supposed to talk?

When he looked up, he saw that the general store and the owner had vanished, replaced by a pitch-black room.

What the hell?

Looking down again, the three tarot cards were gone too, and in their places stood three women.

One was a nude petite adult woman holding a crystal ball.

One was a gorgeous knight with huge breasts and a full ass, dressed in three-piece armor and holding a longsword.

And one was a nun with a flushed face, dressed in a black-and-white fetish habit with a high slit.

Li Xuan stood where he was, studying the three women.

It wasn't hard to tell who the angel was and who the devils were. This was just a simple logic puzzle, one that could separate the devils from the angel with a single question.

The hard part was how to help the angel get rid of the devils.

There was only one angel and two devils. And from the way the three of them were dressed, they were clearly not as weak as they looked.

In other words, once the devils and angel were sorted out, the angel would be outnumbered.

As for Li Xuan, he figured he'd probably be killed in an instant.

Li Xuan rubbed his chin and walked first toward the nude petite woman holding the crystal ball.

As a man with a weakness for petite, doll-like women, he could feel the fire of desire stirring inside him.

The petite woman looked extremely youthful, with a small, delicate body, fair skin, and a tender face.

Her small breasts barely curved at all, and the two pale pink nipples looked soft and inviting.

Beneath a stomach that still carried a hint of baby fat, her lower belly was smooth and hairless, and between her tightly closed thighs her full mound rose like a freshly steamed bun.

Two soft lips were pressed tightly together, hiding her intoxicating pussy deep inside.

Li Xuan felt his cock go so hard it was about to explode.

He lowered his head and sniffed near her hair. The sweet scent of her body rushed straight into his mind, almost burning away what was left of his reason.

But this was not the time to let lust take over.

Reluctantly, Li Xuan kissed the side of the petite woman's neck and thought about how to eliminate them once he had identified the devils.

"Hee hee hee." The petite woman was tickled by Li Xuan's kiss. She smiled, tilted her head, and lifted her innocent young face, looking at Li Xuan with moist eyes.

What was it that devils feared?

Li Xuan stroked the petite woman's delicate face again and again. Unconsciously, his hand slid down along her slender neck and gradually came to her soft breasts.

Her breasts were still so small and undeveloped that they barely deserved the name.

But they felt wonderfully smooth.

Li Xuan gently kneaded the petite woman's tender breasts, as if handling a treasure, his fingers softly teasing the tiny nipples that had only just begun to develop.

Under his practiced touch, the petite woman soon flushed red, her breathing turning quick and shallow.

Li Xuan's other hand moved between her thighs.

The petite woman obediently spread her legs, letting Li Xuan's palm cover her tender mound.

Her mound was soft and warm. Li Xuan's fingers traced lightly along the tightly closed seam, and the faint scrape of his sharp nails teased her sensitive lips, making her young body tremble faintly.

Before long, Li Xuan felt a little wetness on his fingertips.

Hm?

Li Xuan withdrew his hand from between the woman's thighs and looked thoughtfully at the clear, sticky slick on his fingertips.

He had thought of a way to deal with the devils.

Li Xuan let go of the petite woman, who was already flushed and flustered from his teasing, and walked to the center of the three.

He looked back and forth between the three of them and asked loudly.

"Please tell me, which one of you is the angel?"

The knight in three-piece armor said, "The petite woman is the devil!"

The nun in the fetish habit said, "I am the angel!"

The nude woman holding the crystal ball said, "The nun is not the angel!"

After a brief moment's thought, Li Xuan already knew who the angel was and who the devils were.