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

Before them lay a narrow stone chamber, three walls inlaid with wooden latticework. In each lattice lay a miniature coffin, inscribed with a name and date. On the innermost wall hung a yellowed piece of paper with a line of words written in dark red—

"If the mountain villa has no owner, it will fall apart; if it has an owner, it will gather together."

Zhou Lang peeled off the paper, turned it over, and saw a structural diagram of the entire villa drawn on the back. The location of the basement was marked with a red circle and the word "core" written on it.

"Core?" Zhao Qiang leaned closer. "What core?"

Zhou Lang didn't answer. He looked around and noticed a triangular stone platform in the corner of the stone chamber. A black bead, about the size of a marble, was embedded in the recessed part of the platform.

He walked over and took out the beads.

Instantly, the entire basement began to shake.

"Hurry up!"

The three of them ran frantically down the stairs, the sound of crumbling stone walls echoing behind them. When they rushed back to the first floor, the villa's ceiling was already crumbling.

The butler appeared in the center of the hall at some unknown time, his empty eye sockets staring at the black bead in Zhou Lang's hand.

"Congratulations, you have found the core of the manor." Its voice remained emotionless. "This round of the dungeon is over. Settlement begins—"

As the white light shone, the villa shattered into countless pieces in view, like an overturned jigsaw puzzle.

When Zhou Lang opened his eyes again, he was already lying on his bed in his rented room.

The date displayed on my phone was the same as before entering the dungeon, and the time was 3 AM. I had an extra black bead in my pocket, along with the supplies I'd redeemed during the dungeon's settlement.

He sent a message to Zhao Qiang and Han Yingying respectively, confirming that they had both returned safely, then lay back down and closed his eyes.

I slept without any dreams.

He didn't wake up until noon the next day. Zhao Qiang sent him seven or eight voice messages, all of them just rambling on about how good it is to be alive. Zhou Lang listened to two of them and then logged off.

Han Yingying's message was only one: "Thank you."

Zhou Lang replied with an "Mm".

For the next three days, nothing happened. Zhou Lang went to class, ate meals, and worked part-time at the convenience store near the school gate. Zhao Qiang tried several times to invite him to play games, but he refused, saying he "didn't have money to recharge his account."

On the evening of the fourth day, the sky changed.

It wasn't an ordinary sunset; it was the kind everyone had seen before—the sky looked like it had been splashed with a layer of gray water, the clouds hung extremely low, and the air was filled with a metallic, metallic smell.

An eerie event has occurred.

Zhou Lang was in the convenience store, still clutching an unopened packet of instant noodles. He glanced at the gloomy sky outside the window, then picked up his phone. A red icon appeared in the upper right corner of the screen; tapping it revealed only one line of text:

[Dungeon matchmaking in progress. Please do not leave your current location.]

He sighed and stuffed the instant noodles into his pocket.

The darkness descended incredibly quickly, and by the time the light returned, he was no longer in the convenience store.

Before me stood a white wall covered in mold. The air smelled of disinfectant, mixed with another indescribable stench. The clothes I was wearing had become a hospital gown, blue and white striped, with frayed cuffs.

A new plastic wristband appeared on my wrist, labeled with the number 0037.

The four characters "Yongan Hospital" were printed on the opposite wall, with most of the paint peeling off and the remaining characters crooked and twisted.

The corridor was long, and the fluorescent lights overhead flickered on and off, with some completely dark, leaving patches of shadow.

Footsteps came from the left. Zhou Lang turned his head to look—Han Yingying was wearing the same hospital gown, her hair was loose, and the wristband on her wrist had the number 0038.

"We've run into each other again," Han Yingying said.

"Good luck."

Han Yingying glanced at him without saying a word, but the curve of her lips betrayed her emotions.

The two walked down the corridor, and as they passed the nurses' station, there was a yellow piece of paper on the table with printed text:

Welcome to Yong'an Hospital.

You are now admitted to this hospital. Please abide by the following hospitalization rules:

1. Patients must not leave the ward after midnight.

2. If someone calls your name in the hallway, do not respond.

[3. Medication must be taken when dispensed by the nurse.]

4. The operating room door must not be opened.

[5. Patients must survive until the morning of the third day to be discharged.]

A line was added in red at the bottom:

Those who violate the rules will be considered to have automatically forfeited treatment.

Zhou Lang turned the paper over and looked at it; the back was blank.

"Three days." He put the paper back. "Shorter than the mountain villa."

"There are fewer rules than at the resort," Han Yingying said. "But fewer rules aren't necessarily a good thing. The fewer rules there are, the more things are left unsaid."

That makes sense.

The two continued forward, and after turning two corners, a violent commotion came from the end of the corridor—someone was struggling.

Zhou Lang quickened his pace and, as he rounded the corner, saw a man in his early twenties being dragged by something towards a door. The door, which had a sign that read "Operating Room," was already ajar.

The man gripped the door frame so tightly that his fingernails were almost torn off, his face was flushed red, and he couldn't utter a complete word.

Peering through the crack in the door was a hand covered by a surgical rubber glove. The fingers beneath the glove had an extra section at the joints, bent at an incorrect angle, as if they had been broken and then reattached.

Zhou Lang rushed forward and kicked the door. The door was kicked back a few centimeters, trapping the deformed wrist. A sharp screech, like metal scraping, came from the operating room, and the hand jerked back.

The door slammed shut.

The man collapsed to the ground, panting, his forehead covered in sweat. He glanced at Zhou Lang, then at Han Yingying, and opened his mouth to say, "Thank... damn... thank you."

Han Yingying knelt down to examine his fingers; several were bleeding. "What's your name?"

"Lu Chen." The man took a breath. "Number 0041. I was dragged away shortly after I came in, and I haven't even figured out what's going on yet—what the hell is that?"

"Rule number four: the operating room door must not be opened," Han Yingying said. "Were you dragged here?"

"Yes, as I was walking, someone pulled me from behind. When I turned around—" Lu Chen's expression changed, "—I didn't see anything, but something was pulling my hand this way, and my feet wouldn't obey me."

Zhou Lang glanced around the corridor. There was no light coming through the crack in the operating room door; it was eerily quiet.

"Let's go, let's get away from here," he said.

Lu Chen quickly got up and followed behind the two, looking like a quail that had just been given a second chance at life.

When the three of them reached the other end of the corridor, they encountered two other people.

There were two men, one tall and one short. The taller one looked too thin in his hospital gown, like a piece of cloth hanging from a bamboo pole; the shorter one, on the other hand, was sturdy, with a round face and small but bright eyes.

"Alive?" the shorter man spoke first, looking the three of them up and down. "What's your number?"

"0037, 0038, 0041," Han Yingying read out the numbers.

"I'm 0032, Fang Xu. He's 0031, Shen Yue." The shorter man pointed to the taller man next to him. "We got here before you and have already done our rounds."

Shen Yue nodded in greeting.

Fang Xu was a talkative man, and in just a few sentences, he spilled the intelligence they had gathered: the hospital had three floors; the first floor had an outpatient area and operating rooms, the second floor had inpatient wards, and the third floor was a rooftop, but the door was locked. Each floor had a nurses' station, but so far, they hadn't seen any "nurses." There were more than twenty wards, most of which were empty, and a few had "patients" in them—not players, but natives.