The man seemed to react to a specific keyword, suddenly displaying visible terror. His body trembled as he shrank back, the iron chain fastened to his ankle dragging across the floor with a loud, metallic clatter.
“Are you afraid of the ‘fourth floor’?” Yue Shi pressed.
Sure enough, at the mention of the fourth floor, the man’s trembling intensified. Gone was the eloquence he had displayed moments ago; he simply huddled in the corner, silent.
Yue Shi pointed at the chain on his leg and said, “Tell me, what is on the fourth floor? And what happened on the third floor? If you answer correctly, I can set you free.”
The man’s eyes instantly lit up, and his shivering stopped. He spoke immediately. “The Director was trapped on the fourth floor by the new guy. With no one left to manage the third floor, we pretended to be the Director and ate everyone else here.”
Yue Shi asked, “If you two were chained in this ward, how did you manage to get to the Director's Office to deceive people?”
The man gave a sly chuckle and pulled a ring of keys from an inner pocket of his clothes. “We did it with these. The 「Clown」 gave them to us. Although our bodies can’t move, our abilities can extend outward to open the doors of other wards.”
“We excel at disguises and deception. We know best how to pose as someone trustworthy, wait for them to let their guard down, and then forcibly urge them to marry and reproduce before devouring them whole!”
“Can these keys open the wards on the fourth floor?” Yue Shi asked.
The man suppressed his fear and warned in a trembling voice, “Don’t go to the fourth floor! They’re all lunatics!”
The corners of Yue Shi’s mouth curled slightly. It was quite humorous to hear a lunatic boldly claim that others were the crazy ones.
He snatched the ring of keys from the man’s hand. They were flat, old-fashioned models, yet they were unexpectedly ‘new,’ as if they had just come off the production line.
The man looked at Yue Shi with eyes full of anticipation.
“Don’t worry, I’ll grant you your freedom and release right now.” Yue Shi stepped forward with a smile and, with lightning speed, thrust his finger into the man’s temple.
Ethereal, invisible tentacles swept over the two corpses. Yue Shi turned away calmly, flicked the blood from his hand, put the keys in his bag, and headed toward the fourth floor.
The climb to the fourth floor was remarkably smooth. The stairs were still covered in a thick layer of dust, but there were no footprints, as if no one had set foot there for years.
He didn't know exactly how terrifying the supernatural entities on the fourth floor were, but the mere mention of them was enough to make the entities on the third floor shake with fear.
However, Yue Shi did not back down. Upon reaching the fourth floor, he saw a sign on the door of the first room on the left that read “Treatment Room.”
The depths of the corridor were incredibly dim, resembling an infinitely long, bottomless black hole. Yue Shi’s gaze felt as if it were being sucked into it.
At that moment, the 【Demon Feather Barrier】 suddenly vanished with a sharp whoosh!
In an instant, Yue Shi’s heart pounded wildly. An inexplicable sense of dread and horror swept through his entire body.
This fear had no clear source, yet it caused Yue Shi’s adrenaline to spike, and a cold sweat broke out across his skin.
Without the slightest hesitation, he manifested the 【Demon Feather Barrier】 again. Layers of ethereal feathers enveloped him, causing the sense of dread to diminish and his racing heart to slowly calm down.
“The fourth floor is indeed dangerous.” Yue Shi pressed a hand to his chest and walked toward the treatment room.
The door to the treatment room was a rust-stained iron door with a special window, roughly the size of a human head. At first glance, it looked very much like a prison cell.
Yue Shi looked through the window. The treatment room occupied a large area and was filled with equipment resembling electric chairs. Directly in front of the machines was a massive mirror, as if intended for some sick joke to allow the “patients” undergoing electroshock to perfectly admire their own wretched states.
Of course, none of that was what truly caught Yue Shi’s eye. What really drew his attention was that many people were hanging in the treatment room.
Some were dressed in medical uniforms, some in hospital gowns, and a few were in Investigation Bureau uniforms. Iron chains were wrapped around their necks, suspending them from the ceiling.
Normally, a death by asphyxiation from hanging would result in features like bulging eyes, protruding tongues, and a hideous facial expression.
Yet these “corpses” in the treatment room all wore smiles. Covered in a layer of dust, their eyes were wide open, staring in unison toward the door. The scene was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.
Yue Shi took a step back. Simultaneously, the iron chains suspending the corpses in the treatment room began to rotate slowly and silently. The smiles on the corpses' faces widened, and their gazes remained locked onto Yue Shi.
Yue Shi did not rush inside. If anyone lived in this sanatorium, he didn't think they would want to share a room with a group of hanging corpses.
He would only choose to enter this obviously extremely dangerous treatment room if he truly found no other leads.
The room across from the treatment room was a break room. It contained a bed, a desk, chairs, an old computer, and a corner piled with pots, pans, and other kitchen supplies, all similarly covered in dust.
Continuing deeper into the corridor, something strange happened. The space on the fourth floor seemed to have undergone an abnormal change; he could only clearly see four wards in his field of vision. Beyond them was a void of darkness with extremely low visibility.
The doors to these four wards were all heavy iron doors with narrow observation ports, secured from the outside by large padlocks.
Standing before the door of Ward 401, Yue Shi felt the keys in his bag. These keys should be able to open the ward doors.
While Yue Shi was contemplating, he suddenly felt a prickling sensation on his back, like he was being watched. He looked up to see a bloodshot eyeball abruptly appear in the observation port of the iron door in front of him.
The moment Yue Shi’s gaze met that eyeball, the entity vanished with a flash.
This was immediately followed by a thunderous boom. The iron door before him shook violently; the thing inside was ramming the door.
“Oh my, it’s a boy! Hahahaha...”
A voice that sounded like a mixture of a man and a woman echoed from inside the ward.
Yue Shi looked inside. The layout of the ward was simple and clear: only a single bed, with a narrow window set high up in the room, reinforced with steel bars.
Rather than a ward, it was more like a prison. A normal person locked inside would have no chance of escape.
The interior of the ward was pitch black. He could only vaguely see a strange humanoid silhouette.
The figure appeared to be naked, its body covered in numerous columnar protrusions of varying lengths and sac-like tumorous growths.
He stood near the door, staring through the opening at Yue Shi with wide eyes, poised to continue ramming the door.
However, when he realized Yue Shi was looking at him, he suddenly stopped his movements and stood silently in place, letting out a joyful laugh every now and then.
Yue Shi even had the illusion that the patient in Ward 401 seemed to be expressing... goodwill toward him?
This was quite something. Even if a supernatural entity truly was releasing goodwill, it was likely extremely distorted.
Rate on N.U.
