Chapter 345: A Survivor’s Fragility Is Beyond Your Imagination

Pan Fan’s mind felt like mush, and his face stung with a burning pain.

When he opened his eyes, he was met with a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors, and his vision felt incredibly strange.

Fortunately, the Armored Man, an old veteran, was so conspicuous that Pan Fan’s attention slowly began to return.

"Senior, is the survival mission over?" Pan Fan asked, dazed.

"I’m sorry, but no. You’re still in the mansion." Qi Suian’s voice reached Pan Fan’s ears, jolting his Spirit back to reality.

"What a terrible nightmare." Pan Fan scrambled to his feet, his head splitting with pain.

"All I remember is the female ghost lunging at me, and then I lost control."

"The Doomsday Game warned me my contamination level was too high... What about the Divorce Letter? Do you have it, Senior?" The moment he woke, Pan Fan anxiously asked about the Divorce Letter.

In his mind, it was the key to breaking the deadlock; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to affect the female ghost.

"I have it. I also made off with the female ghost’s ancient zither." Qi Suian didn’t hide a thing, showing it to Pan Fan.

He was certain of one thing: Pan Fan was playing dumb.

Handing over the Divorce Letter was something Pan Fan had done before he lost his senses. It was a classic case of diverting the disaster onto someone else.

Pan Fan had likely noticed there was something special about Qi Suian—for instance, how ghosts seemed to ignore him.

Of course, even if he hadn’t noticed, he still did it to save his own skin.

Asking about the key item right after waking up was also a way to test Qi Suian’s attitude.

For now, Pan Fan was the only guinea pig he had. Qi Suian wouldn’t kill him. Instead, he would let the contamination worsen, allowing him to observe more of the truth before deciding what to do.

Based on Qi Suian’s monitoring of Pan Fan’s vital signs, there was no way he would survive twenty-four hours. He had two hours left at most.

He had reached, at the very least, a severe level of contamination.

’This guy is utterly useless. To be this contaminated and have only uncovered this tiny sliver of the truth...’

Qi Suian wasn’t even sure he could finish his research before the man died.

"A senior truly is a senior." Seeing that Qi Suian didn’t mention what had happened, Pan Fan breathed an inward sigh of relief.

’As long as he doesn’t hold it against me, I’m good.’ He was terrified Qi Suian would call him out on it.

After all, the man was stronger than him in every conceivable way. If it came to blows, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

"It’s nothing. However, I still need you to scout ahead. You do want to keep on living, don’t you?" Qi Suian’s threat was veiled but sharp.

Pan Fan’s face went pale. How could he not know what Qi Suian wanted?

He just wanted to use him as cannon fodder.

Pan Fan had become certain of it, especially after Qi Suian headed straight for the zither music when it appeared.

Coupled with this veteran survivor’s bizarre origins, he couldn’t help but let his mind run wild.

"Senior, I’m injured. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be wise for me to go," Pan Fan said with a strained smile, but the refusal in his tone was unmistakable.

"What’s your contamination level at?" Qi Suian suddenly asked.

"Severe contamination, seven percent," Pan Fan reported without hesitation. "Senior, do you have a way to fix it?"

"No. I’m just saying that if you don’t risk it all, you have two hours to live, at most."

"So, scout or don’t scout, it’s up to you. In any case, my mandatory mission is different from yours," Qi Suian bluffed.

Pan Fan’s expression shifted at his words.

He had just checked his contamination level. It had been there before, but only at a mild two percent.

But after passing out, it had skyrocketed to a severe level.

In reality, the change had been gradual, but he hadn’t been paying attention to his status panel, which is why it seemed so sudden.

"Senior, I..." Pan Fan started to say.

But Qi Suian wasn’t listening. He simply turned and walked away.

Pan Fan’s expression flickered between anger and uncertainty. He had, admittedly, intended to use the man—it was for his own survival, after all.

’Besides, he’s a senior. What’s wrong with helping out a junior like me?’

But in the process, he’d sensed Qi Suian’s malicious intent, which was why his attitude had shifted and he had chosen a more drastic course of action.

After Qi Suian left, Pan Fan forced down the swirl of negative emotions. Once his headache had subsided, he began to analyze the situation.

’Finding the reason for the divorce is probably my only chance of survival.’

He couldn’t have missed the strange effects of the Divorce Letter. Since the Doomsday Game sent him here to survive, it surely wouldn’t have placed him in an unwinnable scenario.

This was where he was being naive. If Qi Suian knew what he was thinking, he would have told him: Yes, it would. In fact, you might even encounter a dead-end scenario that the Doomsday Game itself can’t resolve.

’That attic must be her private chamber, but I can’t go there.’

’The ancient zither was taken. Wang Qin has probably lost control completely.’ Pan Fan began to analyze the information.

Wang Qin was the female ghost, the one whose marriage was dissolved by the letter.

’The Divorce Letter states that Wang Qin was unchaste, and that’s why the marriage was dissolved.’

Pan Fan didn’t believe the Divorce Letter. He had a feeling something was wrong.

’The Chastity Archway!’ Pan Fan quickly locked onto a new objective.

’How could a woman honored with a Chastity Archway be divorced for being unchaste?’

’It could belong to someone else, I suppose, but the fact that it’s displayed here must mean it’s a clue.’

With that, Pan Fan hurried off toward the Chastity Archway.

Meanwhile, Qi Suian watched him in silence.

’Wang Qin is too young to have earned a Chastity Archway. If it really is hers, that must mean that each "Wang Qin" represents a different stage of her life.’

Compared to Pan Fan, Qi Suian had a better understanding of Chastity Archways. To be granted one, a widow typically had to remain chaste until a respectable age.

It looked like an honor, but in practice, it was a form of oppression.

Initially, they were primarily about celebrating integrity, established to praise a widowed mother’s devotion in raising her children. It was a kind of reward to honor her family’s virtue.

But once the focus shifted to "chastity," they became something else entirely.

It’s easy to imagine what happened when they became tools for social competition and were tied to the prestige of local officials.

Regardless, the versions of Wang Qin that Qi Suian had seen were all too young to have qualified for a Chastity Archway.

Even if she had taken her own life for a lost love, it wouldn’t have counted. She was divorced on grounds of being unchaste, which would have been seen as a disgrace.

"Still, Pan Fan isn’t on the wrong track. The Chastity Archway is definitely a clue, especially when you factor in the Divorce Letter," Qi Suian murmured.

He then watched as the contamination level on Pan Fan’s body began to rise once more.

Apparently, he had uncovered another truth.

’Truth equals contamination. That equation holds.’

’As for whether *knowledge* equals contamination... that’s still unclear.’

’And whether a *communicated* truth carries contamination... that remains to be seen.’

’I’m a special case, outside the scope of this experiment.’ It wasn’t that Qi Suian hadn’t considered using himself as a test subject; he simply lacked the necessary "structure."

He had no way to perform the experiment on himself. Otherwise, he would have done so long ago.

’Wait, what did he see? He’s not about to die, is he?’ Qi Suian suddenly noticed that after a brief spike, Pan Fan’s vital signs were plummeting.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Qi Suian went over and injected him with a shot of adrenaline.

Would it work? He didn’t know. Then again, humans in the Doomsday Worlds he had experienced all responded to adrenaline.

The good news was that his vitals stabilized. The bad news was that Pan Fan didn’t regain consciousness.

’A vegetative state?’ Qi Suian ran a check. No brain death. He retained some basic nerve reflexes and metabolic functions, but his cognitive abilities were completely gone. All voluntary activity had ceased.

’He still hasn’t reached full contamination. I estimate he’s about twenty to thirty percent short.’

’But the shock was too great for him to handle.’

Qi Suian knew why. It was analogous to the first batch of survivors descending directly into a Sacred Artifact World. The power disparity was so immense that the slightest mishap could cause catastrophic damage.

Ending up in a vegetative state was actually one of the better outcomes. In more severe cases, a single glance could kill you.

’What is the Doomsday Game thinking? Is it treating the fifth batch of survivors as disposable?’ Qi Suian’s brow furrowed.

’Since he’s completely lost all voluntary functions, I might as well make the most of what’s left.’

Qi Suian had planned to squeeze more value out of Pan Fan, but now he had no choice but to proceed ahead of schedule.

"First, I need to keep him alive..." Qi Suian muttered, immediately shaving Pan Fan’s head and opening his skull.

He injected the Abyssal Virus to forcibly maintain the man’s vital signs.

At this point, even if Pan Fan wasn’t technically dead, he was as good as gone. And yet, he was still ’alive.’

However, this was only the beginning. Qi Suian undid the fusion between Fei and the Mad Cathedral.

His goal was simple: use the divine will, Fei, to invade Pan Fan’s Spirit, and then use the Abyssal Virus to jack into Pan Fan’s optic nerve.

By acquiring sensory input on both a physical and spiritual level, he would gain access to Pan Fan’s field of vision.

The reason he hadn’t done this from the beginning was that neither the Abyssal Virus nor Fei were easy to handle. The failure rate was extremely high.

Why else would Qi Suian have chosen to exploit him first? It was precisely because he wasn’t confident he could pull off the procedure that he’d decided to wait until Pan Fan was of no further use before making his move.

This way, not only could he get the most out of his subject, but he could also gather enough data to increase the procedure’s chance of success.

Relying on luck was an option, but you couldn’t rely on luck alone. If he was going to operate with no data whatsoever, he’d better be damn good.

Luck can help you win the lottery, but if you don’t even buy a ticket, luck can’t do a thing.

Even if you don’t buy one, you still have to pick up the ticket someone else dropped before you can go claim the prize.

Even if someone chews your food for you and feeds it to you, you still have to make the effort to swallow. You can’t just refuse to open your mouth.

The power of a "protagonist’s halo" has its limits. More often than not, it just gives you an opportunity; you’re the one who has to seize it to cash in on that luck.

Especially when your life isn’t on the line.

’The Spirit... no, it’s more accurate to say the soul structure is abnormal.’ Qi Suian had already encountered the concept of a soul in the Spirit Root World, but the souls there were "divine souls," a special variant that resulted from the mutation of a Spiritual Root.

In this new world, the souls of the fifth batch of survivors possessed a gaseous structure that could resist the contamination.

It was through this gaseous structure that they were able to perceive the truth of the Underworld.

’Connection established. However, Fei has been identified as an intruder and is continuously depleting the gaseous structure.’

’Estimated to last an hour at most.’