“Dead?”
Yue Shi opened the third eye on his forehead and scanned his surroundings.
There was no abnormal information at the spot where the woman had vanished.
The fog, however, displayed a jumble of garbled code.
Something was clearly wrong with the current situation.
But the upper limits of the Three-Eyed Demon Bird's abilities were truly limited; it was normal for it to be unable to see through things of a higher level.
Yue Shi turned around and retraced his steps.
The thick fog closed in behind him, gradually thinning and disappearing until it transformed back into the city streetscape.
When he saw the familiar hospital building again, the sunlight was still bright, spilling over the white exterior walls.
The streets were lively, and the crowds moved to and fro; it was as if that patch of fog earlier had been nothing but an illusion.
This hospital was the core of the scene inside this bubble and the true stage of this supernatural game.
Like a typical patient, Yue Shi followed the flow of people through the hospital's main entrance.
The scent of disinfectant washed over him.
People were lining up at the registration desk, and the electronic calling system chimed from time to time.
Medical staff in white coats hurried along; everything was busy and orderly.
However, Yue Shi’s gaze saw far more than just this.
He quickly locked onto a small group of people.
That group was scattered throughout the lobby. Some pretended to be looking at the department directory on the wall.
Others sat on benches in the waiting area fiddling with their phones, and two were lingering in front of a vending machine.
On the surface, their appearance and clothing were very ordinary, no different from the surrounding patients or family members.
But occasionally, they would exhibit abnormal behavior.
For instance, they would exchange subtle looks and make extremely rapid hand gestures to one another.
They tended to move in groups of two or three, never straying alone.
Their routes seemed casual, but in reality, they avoided crowded areas and the direct line of sight of surveillance cameras.
There was an overstretched vigilance in their eyes as they constantly scanned the environment, as if they were on guard against something.
Yue Shi saw two young men, one tall and one short, slowly walk toward the fire exit where there were fewer people.
The two spoke in hushed whispers with their backs to the crowd.
Yue Shi moved a few steps closer, his ears catching fragments of their conversation.
“The storage room on the third floor has a key.”
“The record book at the nurse station suggests that after midnight, you absolutely cannot leave the ward.”
“‘Its’ activity patterns haven't been figured out yet.”
“Whatever you do, don't split up. In a newbie instance, the ones who go solo die the fastest.”
Their dialogue was short and hurried, and the content was even more peculiar. It was completely out of place with the surrounding atmosphere of people discussing illnesses or medical expenses.
Yue Shi, however, could understand them.
Although he had never truly participated in this so-called supernatural game, he wasn't some caveman; he frequented the internet and had been exposed to web novels, manga, and movies.
The two young men quickly ended their conversation, separated naturally, and reintegrated into the crowd, always keeping an eye on each other's positions.
Yue Shi also noticed that the range of activity for these people seemed to be restricted to the hospital building.
They would occasionally look toward the street outside the glass doors with longing in their eyes, yet none of them actually tried to walk out.
Until.
A bespectacled man suddenly seemed to see something only he could see, and his face turned deathly pale.
He jumped up from the waiting area in a fright, let out a cry of alarm, and bolted toward the hospital exit, heedless of everything.
“Wait, don't go out!”
His companion tried to stop him, but it was already too late.
The bespectacled man burst through the automatic glass doors and ran out to the sun-drenched hospital porch.
The sidewalk was only a few steps ahead, and he was gasping for breath.
When he finally snapped out of it, he realized that in his extreme panic, he had already stepped outside the mission area.
The bespectacled man shuddered, wanting to turn back into the hospital.
The next second, his body went stiff where he stood. His expression froze, and then, as if his soul had been sucked out, he collapsed silently to the ground.
Pedestrians passing by outside steered clear of him, fearing he was trying to pull a scam.
Medical staff, however, quickly carried him off to the emergency room.
Inside the hospital lobby, the other players who witnessed this scene had varying expressions.
Someone covered their mouth, their body trembling slightly, their eyes filled with terror.
Others were disgusted by the bespectacled man's stupidity and cowardice. The mission had given clear prompts not to leave the hospital, yet he had still made such a low-level mistake.
Being taken to the emergency room meant he was definitely beyond saving.
The players didn't scream, nor did they cause a commotion. They simply shrunk back into the crowd, huddling closer to each other to draw a sense of security.
Yue Shi heard one of them say in a trembling, breathy voice:
“Three dead on the very first day... is this really a newbie instance?”
Another voice responded bitterly, “In a hellhole like this, a newbie instance doesn't mean newbie benefits.”
Yue Shi observed quietly.
These players were all ordinary people; their bodies showed no signs of systematic training, and no supernatural annotations appeared.
From their intermittent exchanges, Yue Shi pieced together some information.
They had all mysteriously received game invitations and, after experiencing various events, were forced to tear the invitations to enter the game.
This was their first instance, and the mission seemed to be surviving in this hospital for a certain period or finding something.
Despite how frightened the players were, none of them broke down in tears or loudly questioned things with low-IQ tropes like “This is a kidnapping” or “It's all fake.”
Everyone gritted their teeth and endured, thinking hard and trying to cooperate to find a path of life together.
After all, in the real world, the supernatural ran rampant. They might not have faced the supernatural directly before.
But under the influence of what they had seen and heard, they already had a basic understanding of these incomprehensible and terrifying events.
When abnormal phenomena appeared, the process of doubt and breakdown was skipped entirely as they quickly adapted to their current state.
Yue Shi shifted his gaze from the players to scan the other people in the hospital.
These people were referred to by the players as NPCs.
Doctors, nurses, patients, and family members all went about their business with vivid expressions and natural dialogue.
There was a pregnant woman in the obstetrics department who not only insisted on womb-veganism but also refused to buy formula for the child, claiming she would raise the baby on rice oil boiled with yang fire.
No matter how others tried to persuade her, she stuck to her theories.
In a ward, a child about to undergo surgery wasn't allowed to eat, but the child's grandfather felt bad for him and secretly snuck in two large chicken drumsticks.
Truly, an elder in the family is like a treasure.
Yue Shi noticed that the computers used at the nurse station were antiques.
The health promotion posters pasted on the walls had a very different design style.
One couldn't find any shadow of the supernatural or vigilance on the faces of the NPCs; they were more worried about diseases and money.
Most importantly, Yue Shi saw the content on their phone screens.
【The ██-related topic of ████ and ████ has over 100 million followers.】
【A dihydrogen monoxide leak has occurred; the entire residential building is in trouble.】
【Flowers don't stay red for a hundred days, but chrysanthemums bloom in a single night. Popular male star of country ██, Huzhang Mingren, officially announces his debut in adult films.】
Yue Shi stood in the center of the hospital lobby, surrounded by the vivid atmosphere of the mundane world.
A conclusion became clear in his heart: the background of this game instance was different from the real world outside.
This was the Old Era, before the supernatural descended.
Rate on N.U.
