In the dim corridor, this small amount of light allowed her to see her step clearly without making her an overly conspicuous target. In a crisis, it could also serve as a protective shield.
Cen Yao let out a soft breath.
Very good.
Currently, the lighting was adequate, her retreat path was secured, and her shield was ready.
As for her mental state...
Cen Yao listened to the wailing of ghosts drawing closer and took a moment to assess how she felt.
Surprisingly, she was doing okay.
Perhaps it was because she knew this was a simulated exam venue, or maybe because she finally had the means to protect herself.
Or perhaps it was both.
In any case, she didn't feel the urge to curl up and cover her head right now.
This was already a massive step forward.
Cen Yao gripped her wand tightly and walked down the corridor.
The fire butterflies fluttered gracefully around her, their faint golden light sweeping across the walls, revealing distorted human faces beneath the peeling paint.
These faces looked like patients who had been sealed into the walls alive. Their eyeballs squeezed to the edges of their sockets, slowly turning to follow Cen Yao's footsteps.
At the end of the corridor, a ward door silently cracked open.
A pale, ash-gray hand reached out from the gap.
The hand was so emaciated it was nothing but skin and bones, yet its fingernails were long and black, like ten curved blades.
Immediately after, an upside-down face appeared.
The monstrous creature crawled on the ceiling with its limbs contorted. Its neck was bent at a bizarre angle, its facial skin stitched together crookedly, and its mouth split all the way to its ears. It had no teeth, only dense rings of tiny flesh buds.
It stared at Cen Yao and let out a muffled chuckle.
“New... patient...”
Before the words could fully fade, the ward doors on both sides burst open at the same time.
A nurse with no lower half crawled out from the floor, dragging her long intestines behind her while clutching a rusty syringe in her hand.
On the other side, an old man with a sliced-open stomach stood up against the wall. His abdominal cavity held no organs, only clumps of black hair spilling out.
Cen Yao's stomach churned.
She was still afraid.
Truly terrified.
So scared that her palms were slick with sweat.
But she didn't close her eyes, nor did she retreat.
She channeled the magic power within her body, and a soft yet brilliant white light lit up at the tip of her wand.
In the next instant, the light suddenly expanded behind her.
A phoenix condensed from pure light elements spread its wings and soared out from behind her.
Its entire body was a translucent, pearly white, with golden flames burning along the edges of its wings. Its long tail feathers cascaded down like countless galaxies falling into the darkness.
The moment it appeared, the bone-chilling cold of the entire corridor was forcibly torn apart.
The monsters shrieked in unison as if they were being severely burned.
The phoenix took flight.
As the fiery light swept across the ceiling, the upside-down face ghost was instantly rendered translucent. Its skin, bones, and black blood turned to ash layer by layer.
The nurse specter raised her syringe to pounce, but the phoenix's tail feathers swept gently. Golden light rolled over her like a tide, and before she could even shriek, she shattered into a pile of ashes.
The black hair in the disemboweled old man's stomach writhed frantically, trying to entangle the phoenix.
Yet the moment the hair touched the light flames, it crackled and burned into black smoke like cobwebs falling into a fire.
Light magic.
The most effective category of elemental magic against ghosts and monsters.
Cen Yao watched the scene unfold and silently gave the light phoenix a five-star review in her heart.
If nothing else, its field-clearing effect was superb.
It didn't stop after just one lap. The phoenix threw back its head and let out a clear, resonant cry, flying deeper into the corridor.
Waves of golden-white light spread from beneath its wings, passing through wards, sweeping over operating rooms, and shining into the nurse's station and utility closets.
The ghost infant hiding under the bed was turned to ash.
The decapitated patient hanging behind the curtains was turned to ash.
Even the creature crouching in the toilet stall counting eyeballs was reduced to ash.
Cen Yao strolled leisurely behind the phoenix.
All she saw along the way was ash covering the floor.
Cen Yao fell silent for two seconds and said with genuine emotion, “There's a certain beauty in a top student finishing the exam early, and me only being responsible for copying the answers.”
The orb: “...”
Be that as it may, she was the one who had conjured this phoenix.
It still counted as her own answers.
After flying through the entire outer perimeter of the exam venue, the phoenix's light gradually faded, finally dispersing into specks of golden starlight.
The corridor grew dark once more.
The fire butterflies still fluttered quietly around Cen Yao.
Right at that moment, the surroundings suddenly fell dead silent.
It wasn't that the noise had faded.
Rather, all sound had been choked off by an invisible hand.
The crying stopped.
The laughter ceased.
Even the buzzing hum of the light tubes vanished.
A chill ran down the back of Cen Yao's neck.
She didn't look back.
Her extensive experience watching horror livestreams told her that looking back at a moment like this usually meant either staring straight into a ghost's face or offering her neck right up to its jaws.
She threw herself forward into a roll.
At the same time, she whipped her wand backward.
A blade of light tore through the darkness, grazing the very spot where she had been standing.
A piercing shriek suddenly erupted.
Cen Yao stabilized her posture and deployed a shield in front of her. The silver-white barrier blocked the black smoke blowing toward her.
Only then did she clearly see the thing that had ambushed her.
It could hardly be called human.
It was shrouded in dense black smoke, and its skin looked as though it had been repeatedly charred and then forcibly patched back together, with dark red blood seeping from the cracks.
Its limbs were exceptionally long, its joints bent backward, and heavy iron chains wrapped around its wrists and ankles. The other ends of the chains dragged along the floor, emitting a harsh scraping sound with its every movement.
Its fingernails were long and black, with bits of decaying flesh still clinging to the tips.
The most disgusting part was its chest.
It had been sliced open and crudely stitched back together with thick iron wire.
Between the wires, a mass of black flesh that didn't belong to a human pulsed, as if something was still alive inside, thumping against its skin from within.
Suppressing her nausea, Cen Yao's mind habitually began to analyze the situation.
An abandoned hospital, test subjects, chains, suture marks, mental pollution...
Could this hospital have performed human experiments in the past?
This thing didn't look like an ordinary ghost; it seemed more like a victim ruined by the hospital's experiments.
Just as this thought crossed her mind, a line of System text suddenly materialized above the monster:
【Please heal the test subject.】
Cen Yao: “...”
She stared at the words and fell silent for three seconds.
“Sys, isn't your exam being a bit unsportsmanlike?”
One second it was ambushing her with long fingernails, and the next second she was asked to heal it.
What kind of hellish doctor-patient relationship was this?
But despite her complaints, Cen Yao didn't slow down.
She raised her wand, and several chains of light shot up from the floor, binding the test subject's limbs and neck, pinning it firmly in place.
The test subject struggled frantically, black smoke swirling as the iron chains clanked against the floor, throwing off sparks.
Cen Yao didn't get close.
Standing at a safe distance, she first used a Weakening Curse to suppress its surging pollution, then cast a Calming Curse to pierce through its chaotic mental fluctuations.
The test subject's wailing grew sharply louder.
Cen Yao frowned, a soft green light glowing at the tip of her wand.
“Bear with it.”
“Even though you're simulated, not a single simulated patient I've treated has ever filed a successful complaint.”
The healing magic descended.
The moist green light covered the test subject like spring water, clashing violently with the black smoke surrounding it.
The black smoke sizzled as if scorched, peeling away from its skin layer by layer.
The mass of black flesh in its chest wriggled desperately, seemingly trying to escape.
Cen Yao's gaze turned cold, and she tightened the light chains, forcing it right back down.
The second healing spell fell.
The iron wires loosened bit by bit, the rotting flesh healed over, and the unnaturally bent joints popped with a tooth-grating crack, slowly returning to their normal positions.
The third healing spell fell.
The black mist on the test subject finally dispersed.
The monster was no longer a monster, returning to the form of an emaciated young man.
He curled up on the floor, scars from the chains still marking his wrists and ankles. His face was pale, and a single tear of blood slid down from the corner of his eye.
Cen Yao didn't look any longer.
The things in the simulated exam venue were too realistic. She was afraid that if she looked too much, she would soften her heart, and she was afraid that a soft heart would affect her judgment.
Rate on N.U.
