Chapter 137 - 127: All Rules Broken

In Ward 414, when the fire alarm blared, Wei Yang sat bolt upright in bed.

"We’re doomed!"

Yin Zhen’s heart skipped a beat. She had thought this was the kind of instance where she just needed to carefully navigate the rules and survive for three days to clear it. She never expected the rulebook to be thrown out on the very first night!

Outside the window, the sky changed color at an impossible speed, as if scorched by a massive fire. The entire sky turned dark red. Immediately after, the snow-white walls began to yellow from the corners, layers of rust surfaced on the nightstands, and the bedding gradually turned gray, becoming covered in dried bloodstains.

On the middle bed, a human-shaped silhouette emerged as the bedsheets rapidly aged. It looked exactly as if... someone had rotted on that very bed, their putrid bodily fluids soaking through the sheets to leave a stain.

Yin Zhen tightly gripped the Triangular Yellow Talisman in her hand.

A scream rang out beyond the door. Footsteps rushed past as people shouted, "Fire!" and "Run!"

The on-duty nurse’s voice echoed from down the corridor, hoarse and urgent.

"Don’t panic, everyone! Evacuate through the east stairwell! Do not use the elevators!"

Wei Yang pulled the ward door open and hesitated at the threshold for a moment. Then, she turned back and shot Yin Zhen a fierce glare.

"If you don’t want your mother to come back and find you missing, just stay put right here."

With that, she stepped out of the room. Yin Zhen walked to the door and peeked outside.

The entire building had lost power. Lit only by the glow of emergency lights, the air was filled with a faint, choking smoke, though no open flames were visible.

Patients in their hospital gowns stumbled toward the east wing. A nurse supported an elderly woman from behind, walking and shouting, "Slow down, slow down!"

"The east stairwell is gone!"

Keeping her feet planted inside the ward, Yin Zhen leaned out to look. Ward 414 wasn’t far from the east stairwell, and she had just checked it during the day. But now, nothing remained over there except a scorched, black wall.

"Where’s my dad? He was just right beside me! Dad—!"

"Ah—!"

A miserable shriek pierced the air from the direction of the nurse’s station. As Wei Yang dashed over from the crowd, she saw a patient slumped at the doorway, pointing a trembling finger at the corner.

It was an elderly man’s corpse. A syringe had completely pierced through his right eyeball, leaving half of the barrel lodged deep within the socket.

The man who had been searching for his father reached the nurse’s station door.

"Dad!!!"

A living, breathing person had died a gruesome death in just a matter of seconds.

"My calls won’t go through! The Signal is completely cut off! What do we do?"

"Get back to your wards, all of you!"

Wei Yang stood on a chair at the nurse’s station, shouting at the panicked patients and nurses fleeing in all directions, but no one listened to her.

A few people headed toward the west stairwell, trying to find tools to break the lock on its door.

Wei Yang muttered, "A death wish," and ignored the group. She strode back, shoved Yin Zhen inside the ward, and slammed the door shut.

"Now, neither you nor I are stepping out of this door until seven in the morning! Whatever your mother is doing out there is her business. If you go out now, you’ll just be making a mess for me. Get back to bed!"

In the team chat channel, Bai Qiang sent another message.

"I’m in an empty ward on the fifth floor. I’m safe for now. There’s no open flame here, just smoke. It doesn’t seem like a real fire."

Yin Zhen informed Bai Qiang about the situation on the fourth floor and Wei Yang’s actions. The chaos outside was still ongoing; tonight was destined to be a sleepless one.

With the entire building suffering a power outage, the indoor AC had also stopped working. The air grew stiflingly hot. Yin Zhen walked to the window and tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

She secretly had Ying try to phase through the wall, but Ying was also blocked inside the building by a mysterious Strength.

Now the whole building had truly become a sealed coffin. No one could even dream of leaving.

Screams still echoed outside from time to time, but Wei Yang was already lying in her hospital bed, flipping through her novel again. Her psychological fortitude was terrifyingly strong.

"Are you from the Abnormal Investigation Bureau?" Yin Zhen asked tentatively.

Wei Yang neither looked up nor answered.

"Will someone come save us?" Yin Zhen continued asking.

This time, Wei Yang raised her eyes from behind the book and looked at Yin Zhen. "I find you to be a rather interesting kid."

Wei Yang and Qin Jia didn’t know each other previously, so Yin Zhen didn’t need to act exactly like Qin Jia. She didn’t even know what Qin Jia’s original personality was like anyway.

In horror movies, children were inherently a vulnerable demographic, often the first to be abandoned.

Therefore, she couldn’t show cowardice or weakness. She had to do her best to keep Wei Yang from treating her as a burden, all without blowing her cover.

Yin Zhen stood by the window and said, "I’ve encountered foul entities before. My grandma said that as long as I’m not afraid of them, they can’t hurt me."

"And you actually believe a lie meant for children." Wei Yang lowered her eyes and went back to reading, though she added, "The situation outside isn’t normal. At seven tomorrow morning, if the sun comes up, we’ll be fine. If it doesn’t, then just pray your grandma comes to save you."

After saying that, Wei Yang paid Yin Zhen no further attention.

Yin Zhen couldn’t do anything right now anyway, and with Wei Yang present, the ward should be safer than anywhere else.

It seemed she had slightly better Luck than Bai Qiang in this instance. Thinking about that left Yin Zhen a bit speechless; Bai Qiang knew full well that she was currently an expendable extra whose life was hanging by a thread, yet she still secretly stuffed the Yellow Talisman back under her pillow.

Yin Zhen returned to her bed, gripping the Yellow Talisman as she tried to fall asleep.

Despite the noise outside, Yin Zhen somehow managed to drift off unknowingly in such an environment.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

A continuous chiming sound, accompanied by vibrations from her chest, abruptly jolted Yin Zhen awake. It was Zoe waking her up.

The sky outside was still a dark, murky red. Yin Zhen raised her hand to check her watch. It was already seven thirty in the morning, but there was still no Signal.

Furthermore, Wei Yang was no longer in her hospital bed.

Yin Zhen looked at the Yellow Talisman she had been clutching the whole time. It was very likely that this talisman had the ability to induce sleep. Sometimes in horror movies, genuinely falling asleep was indeed a way to evade danger.

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Are you still on the fifth floor?

Yin Zhen got out of bed. She first took out the blood she had prepared earlier and squeezed a drop onto the Pet Machine.

The little egg, Zoe, wobbled. A question mark appeared above it, seemingly asking Yin Zhen what had happened outside.

Yin Zhen didn’t have time to explain. She stuffed the Pet Machine into her clothes, slung on the backpack she had prepared yesterday, and left the ward.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: The east stairwell on the fifth floor is gone, and the elevators are out of service. Only the west stairwell is usable, but last night, a few patients on the fifth floor smashed open its door and went down, and haven’t been heard from since. I’m considering whether I should go down the west stairs.

[Blossoming Prosperity]: Wait a minute. I’ll go check the west stairwell on the fourth floor.

Only the emergency lights were still on in the hallway. The fourth floor didn’t have many admitted patients to begin with, and it was extremely quiet outside right now.

When Yin Zhen passed by the nurse’s station, she saw the corpse in the duty room.

Upon arriving at the west stairwell, Yin Zhen saw a group of people: two on-duty nurses, four orthopedics patients, and four accompanying family members. Wei Yang was surrounded in the center of them.

Yin Zhen squeezed into the crowd and saw Wei Yang gripping a rope. The rope was pulled taut, connected to something down the stairs.

Wei Yang was hauling it up. With a sudden burst of effort, she yanked a severed human hand right in front of everyone. The stump was jagged, as if it had been forcefully torn off, with stark white bone splinters jutting out from the ragged flesh. The fingers were still spasming, and black ash from clawing at walls was caked beneath the fingernails.

Two family members instantly recoiled, bumping into the wall. One covered their mouth and dry-heaved, while the others quickly turned their heads away, too afraid to look.

The on-duty nurse’s voice trembled, but she tried her best to stay calm. "Not a single person who went down here last night has come back."

Yin Zhen squeezed through the gaps between people to the very front and leaned forward to peer into the stairwell.

The west stairwell was even darker than outside. The emergency lights were covered in a thick layer of dust, emitting only a dim, dark red halo. The air turned noticeably colder here, and the burnt stench was much heavier than anywhere else.

Yin Zhen poked her head into the stairwell and shouted "Zhang Yueqin!" upward a few times. The echoes traveled up step by step.

Yin Zhen pulled her head back and asked Bai Qiang in the team channel if she had heard her voice.

Bai Qiang replied that she hadn’t. She hadn’t heard anything; it was completely quiet.

"What do we do now? The east stairwell is gone, the elevators are stopped, and the Signal is completely cut off. How are we supposed to get out?"

"Right now, you’d better pray that the Abnormal Investigation Bureau sends someone to handle this quickly," Wei Yang said coldly. "Though I’m afraid the people present won’t live long enough to see it."

"I know how to go downstairs."

A childish voice rang out, and the crowd collectively turned their gazes toward Yin Zhen.