A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

"Note: All test subjects have gone out of control; the basement level has been sealed off. The key is in the dean's office."

A prompt appeared on the panel:

[Quest item found: Black medical record]

[New Mission: Leave through the hospital's main entrance]

"Got it." Han Yingying closed the medical record. "Let's go."

"Wait a minute." Fang Yuan suddenly asked an unrelated question, "Han Yingying, have you heard of a player called 'Langligelang' outside of the game?"

Han Yingying paused for a moment. "I've heard of it."

Fang Yuan's expression changed. His usual carefree attitude vanished, replaced by an almost fanatical seriousness.

"I'm his fan." Fang Yuan said this with a hint of embarrassment. "I know it sounds funny—a Lv.5 player idolizing another player. But you have no idea how outrageous that person is."

"How is it so outrageous?"

Fang Yuan started counting on his fingers: "You probably know he got a perfect rating on his first dungeon run. But what you don't know is that he scared the boss away in the second dungeon—not by defeating it, but by scaring it away. A ghost being scared away by a person, can you believe it?"

Han Yingying believed it, of course. She had seen it with her own eyes.

"The third instance is even more amazing," Fang Yuan said, getting more and more excited. "He directly recruited the ghosts in the instance and brought them out to use as his subordinates. So far, he's the only one on the entire server who has ever done something like that."

Han Yingying knew this. Zhao Qiang was the one who had been "recruited".

"And his data on the leaderboard—" Fang Yuan was about to continue when Xu Kun interrupted him.

"That's enough," Xu Kun said. "Get out of here."

Fang Yuan awkwardly shut his mouth.

Han Yingying remained silent. She was all too familiar with the events Fang Yuan described. But something was stuck on the edge of her memory, vague and indistinct, like looking through frosted glass—she could see the outline, but not the details.

That sense of familiarity made her very uncomfortable.

The five people returned the way they came, going back to the second floor through the secret passage. It was 4:30 PM, and there were still three and a half hours before nightfall, plenty of time.

But the road to the main gate is difficult to navigate.

The lobby on the first floor is full of ghosts.

Han Yingying's perception skills detected at least seventeen ghost-like units scattered throughout the lobby. Some sat on waiting chairs, some stood behind the registration windows, and some squatted in corners—they maintained their habits from life, reliving their last day in this abandoned hospital.

"Force it?" Fang Yuan asked.

"Forcing your way through is a dead end," Han Yingying shook her head.

She stared at the layout of the lobby for a while and noticed an employee passage behind the information desk in the center of the lobby.

"Go that way," she pointed.

They moved close to the wall. Lin Xiaoxi was half-dragged, half-pulled along by Lu Ting, her lip bleeding from being bitten. As they passed the waiting area, a ghost sitting in a chair suddenly turned its head—

Han Yingying grabbed Lin Xiaoxi and covered her mouth with her hand.

The ghost stared at them for a few seconds, then slowly turned its head back.

Han Yingying's palms were sweaty.

The staff passage leads to the hospital's back door. The back door is locked with chains, but fortunately, their task is to leave through the "front door." The other end of the passage connects to the side wing of the outpatient building, and a loop around it leads to the front door.

It took twenty minutes to take the detour.

The main glass door was shattered, and the ground was covered with a layer of broken glass. Outside, the sky was gray and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

Han Yingying was the first to walk out.

Her foot slammed into the broken glass, making a crisp "crack" sound. She stepped over the doorway and stood on the steps outside the hospital.

A panel pops up:

[Instance Complete]

[Rating: S]

[Rewards: Skill Evolution Fragment x1, Gold Coins 1000, Title "Intuitive One"]

"S-rank?" Fang Yuan exclaimed from behind, "An S-rank on the third dungeon run?"

The way he looked at Han Yingying completely changed.

Han Yingying ignored him. She was looking at another system notification:

[Anomaly detected: Dungeon difficulty offset +2. Original difficulty B, actual execution difficulty A. Reason: Unknown.]

Difficulty shift?

She had always assumed that rank A was normal. Due to her amnesia, she had no concept of the difficulty of dungeons. But the system clearly stated that this dungeon should have been rank B.

The things Zhou Lang had mentioned before suddenly came to mind.

He once said that "there is a strange bug."

She didn't pay much attention to it at the time.

Now it seems that this matter may be much more serious than she imagined.

After the dungeon ended, the five people stood in a white void, each enveloped by a teleportation circle.

"Can we team up for the next dungeon run?" Lin Xiaoxi suddenly asked. She held Han Yingying's hand; her fingers were icy cold.

Han Yingying glanced at her. This girl hadn't been of any help at all throughout the entire instance; she had been protected the whole time. But her eyes were red, and her nose was red too, making her look pitiful.

"Okay," Han Yingying said. "Give me your ID."

Lin Xiaoxi quickly opened the panel to bind the account.

Han Yingying turned to look at Xu Kun and Fang Yuan. "What about you two?"

"We..." Fang Yuan looked at Xu Kun.

Xu Kun shook his head: "No. We have our own rhythm."

Han Yingying did not force her.

The aperture began to shrink. Before disappearing, Fang Yuan shouted, "Han Yingying! You really look like that person!"

The light swallowed his voice.

Han Yingying woke up from a dream again.

This time she didn't get up immediately, but lay there staring at the ceiling.

The room was laid out exactly as she remembered—a desk, a wardrobe, curtains half-drawn, sunlight filtering through the gaps and drawing a bright line on the floor.

But something's not right.

She couldn't quite put her finger on what was wrong. It was like walking into a room you pass through every day, and one day suddenly noticing that a piece of furniture had been moved—but you stare at it for a long time, and everything is clearly in its original place.

Han Yingying sat up and picked up her phone.

Date: The day after she entered the haunted manor.

In other words, the three days she spent in the abandoned hospital—those seventy-two hours—actually amounted to only one night.

The flow rate of time is inconsistent.

She had encountered this before, noticing it at the end of her first dungeon run. But she hadn't thought much of it then.

She opened the system panel and checked her copy history.

Dungeon 1: The Mysterious Classroom, Difficulty C (Actual Difficulty C)

Dungeon 2: Terror Manor, Difficulty A (Actual Difficulty A)

Dungeon 3: Abandoned Hospital, Difficulty A (Original B, Offset +2)

Her gaze lingered on the third record for a long time.

Offset +2.

If we trace back, were there any offsets in the first two copies? The system doesn't indicate this, but that doesn't mean there weren't. Perhaps the offsets in the first two copies weren't large enough to trigger the warning threshold.

In other words, she had been playing dungeons that were beyond normal difficulty without even realizing it.

Zhou Lang knew about this. He had told her about the "weirdness and bugs" back in the haunted manor. At the time, his tone was very calm, as if he were just saying that the weather was nice today.