A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

The surrounding space stands still. Time is stretched and extended infinitely within this angle.

Old Ghost's downward thrust, with his arms raised high, froze completely in mid-air. Through the mere centimeters separating them, he clearly saw those eyes so close to his own. They held no human emotion, no warmth, no life force.

This isn't about judging a person's expression at all; it's purely an assessment of the deboned meat on the pork stall and the inventory of cold storage supplies.

The swift, deadly strike, aimed at his throat, carried a palpable, intense aura of death, forcefully piercing deep into his bone marrow along the skin's texture at the edge of his mask.

All bodily functions shut down; not even the squeezing sound of air could be produced in the throat. The leg muscles were stripped of all ability to stand and exert force, leaving only extremely weak and irregular spasms and tremors.

Inside the broadcast van, Jiang Yan's gasps for breath were clearly audible in the enclosed space; her fingernails dug into her palms, drawing tiny drops of blood. Yan Ji's determined expression froze into a clay statue.

The wind pressure from the edge of his palm had already slicing through the fine hairs around the old man's Adam's apple. The tip of the scalpel was only 0.1 millimeters away from the wall of the subcutaneous artery. Death was only the thickness of a sheet of paper.

A mere instant, a fraction of a millimeter.

Reason forcefully intervened from its slumber, transforming into an invisible force on the lasso, firmly reining in this rampaging, bloodthirsty wild horse.

The devastating force, enough to shatter four to six cervical vertebrae, disintegrated in mid-air. The five fingers, taut as steel plates, suddenly unfolded, the joints relaxed, and the fingertips regained their gentle, soft touch.

"Clatter".

His hand landed lightly, expertly resting on the old ghost's broad, armored shoulder. Lu Yuan's taut facial muscles softened, his smile becoming gentle and harmless. He lowered his head slightly and patted the terrified gold-medal NPC on the shoulder.

"It's late at night, you must be tired from working."

The three sets of strobe lights entered a heat dissipation sleep mode, and the corridor power supply switched back to a dim, constant green background.

He Rihuo and Meng Ying, crouching on the ground trembling, suppressed their heart palpitations and cautiously raised their chins. Their gazes moved beyond the heavy darkness toward the wardrobe door. Lu Yuan was slowly putting his right hand, which had just finished parrying, back into his windbreaker pocket.

The infamous "King of Fright" in the industry, Old Ghost, with a thud, turned into a pile of boneless mud and landed solidly on the bottom of the wardrobe.

Looking down his dark gray, multi-pocketed cargo pants, a large, yellowish-brown puddle of water was rapidly seeping from the center. Drip, drip. The liquid trickled down the seam of the trouser leg and splashed onto the dusty cement floor.

Lu Yuan lowered his eyelids and examined the expanding puddle of water with interest for two seconds. Then he turned around, raised his free hand, and called out to his teammates who were still in a daze and had stumbled and fallen.

"Let's go, don't just stand here. The cleaning lady still needs to mop the floor later."

At the very first gate of the abandoned mental hospital, amidst an eerie atmosphere that sent chills down one's spine, the most incomprehensible and absurd escape took place.

Meng Ying pressed herself against the wall, her hands gripping Da Yan's sleeves so tightly that the collar of his hoodie was almost deformed.

Even the opium lord dared not move.

Shen Yiming stood there, his throat bobbing twice, but he couldn't bring himself to say, "The show's effect is really good."

He Rihuo has smoothly upgraded his perception from "this person is a living father" to "this person is a living Yama who goes to the grassroots to experience people's lives".

The sound of wheels rolling over the floor tiles came from the other end of the corridor, and two support staff members jogged in pushing a stretcher.

"Old Ghost? Old Ghost!"

One of them squatted down, checked his breathing, breathed a sigh of relief, then noticed the pants, and his facial muscles twitched.

"It's okay, it's okay, I was just scared."

Another muttered quietly, "Isn't he just there to scare people?"

"Shut up, lift it."

The two men dragged and pulled the 1.9-meter-tall strong man onto a stretcher. Old Gui woke up briefly, opened his eyes halfway, saw Lu Yuan standing beside him, and then closed them again.

He played dead with great professionalism.

As the stretcher was being pushed away, its wheels got stuck on the hinge of a wardrobe that had fallen down, making a thud. Meng Ying flinched.

Lu Yuan turned around and looked at the few people who were still standing there.

"Let's go."

No one answered.

He pointed to the end of the corridor: "There are more checkpoints ahead, right? We can't dawdle for too long."

The group moved forward again.

The positioning has changed significantly this time.

Shen Yiming took the lead, with Meng Ying following behind him. Da Yan was third, and He Rihuo originally wanted to be fourth, but when he found that Lu Yuan was also walking to the back, he slipped and squeezed between Da Yan and Meng Ying.

Lu Yuan lagged behind, but he didn't mind, walking leisurely with his hands in his pockets.

Inside the broadcast van, Yan Ji sat back down in his chair, his forehead covered in sweat.

Old Fang stood to the side, not daring to utter a sound for a long time.

On the monitor, the stretcher had already taken Lao Gui out of the stadium, and the medical team surrounded him.

Jiang Yan sat in the back row, looking at the screen, her hand still on the walkie-talkie.

If Lu Yuan hadn't stopped himself, the emergency team would have already intubated him.

Yan Ji wiped his forehead with a tissue. "Continue recording."

Old Fang whispered, "Mr. Yan, should we remove the NPCs at the back?"

Yan Ji didn't speak. He stared at Lu Yuan's nonchalant appearance on the screen, and his facial muscles twitched a couple of times.

The first level was a disaster, but Escape Room isn't a fighting arena; some things are beyond your control no matter how fast your punches are.

For example, logic locks! For example, mathematical puzzles! For example, the three-layer nested cipher that they outsourced to a team from Tsinghua University's mathematics department for design!

Yan Ji picked up the walkie-talkie: "Proceed with the ward security checkpoints as planned. Confirm all mechanism statuses and put the combination lock into monitoring mode."

On the screen, the guests walked to the end.

The heavy iron gate was half-open, and a pale light shone from inside.

Lu Yuan was the last to step inside.

"Bang!" The iron door slammed shut behind them, the sound of the bolt hitting the door echoing through the ward.

One fluorescent light after another lit up overhead, casting a white light that made people's skin appear bluish.

The ward was small. The four walls were covered with red writing, densely packed with numbers, dates, illegible medical record numbers, and a few incoherent confessions.

Three metal bunk beds lay across the middle, their boards rusted and covered with tattered sheets. Scattered on the sheets were props and dismembered limbs: severed hands, prosthetic legs, and a dissected silicone abdominal cavity—quite disgusting.

At the exit directly ahead, there is a horizontal iron fence with a brass three-digit combination lock hanging from the fence's lock.

You need to find the password to unlock it.

Shen Yiming is already in the zone.

He squatted down beside the bed and began searching through the pillows and mattress lining. "Everyone, split up and look. Don't touch the numbers on the wall; memorize their locations first."

Da Yan pulled out a torn piece of paper from under the cabinet. "A diary, stained with blood."

Meng Ying suppressed her nausea and pulled out half a transparent plastic piece from the inner pocket of a hospital gown. The piece had "4F" engraved on it.

Shen Yiming then pulled a music box from the seam of his pillow. The box was missing a section of its spring, and a label was attached to the bottom: The seventh night, please remember the songs she sang.