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

Footsteps, the sound of a cart being pushed, and whispers coming from a room—I couldn't make out what they were saying, but the rhythm was strange, like they were reciting something over and over again.

Lu Chen huddled in the corner, hugging his knees with both arms, looking like he couldn't take it anymore.

Fang Xu adapted quickly, leaning against the cabinet and starting to doze off. Shen Yue sat by the window, his eyes half-open, one hand always on his knee, ready to move at any moment.

Zhou Lang and Han Yingying sat not far apart. Neither of them was asleep, but they didn't talk much either.

This quietness wasn't awkward. That's how they were at the resort—perfectly in sync when needed, and each minding their own business when there was nothing to do, without needing to fill the gaps with idle chatter.

Around 2 a.m., a voice suddenly shouted in the corridor.

"Fang——Xu——"

The drawn-out syllable sound seemed to drift from a very far place.

Fang Xu suddenly opened his eyes and almost stood up to answer, but Shen Yue pressed his shoulder down.

"Rule Two," Shen Yue said, uttering only two words.

Fang Xu realized what was happening, covered his mouth tightly, and pressed his back against the cabinet, afraid to move.

The voice in the corridor called out three times, but received no response and gradually faded away.

"Damn." Fang Xu only let go after the sound completely stopped, his palms were sweaty. "How did it know my name?"

No one can answer this question.

The second day was relatively safe. Zhou Lang took Han Yingying to the second floor to familiarize them with the layout of the inpatient department. Most of the ward doors were closed, and they could occasionally hear noises coming from inside, but they didn't open them.

The pharmacy at the end of the second-floor corridor was still locked. Zhou Lang tried several methods to open it but failed. Finally, after trying to pry it open with scissors for a long time, it popped open with a "click".

The pharmacy shelves were filled with bottles and jars, all with handwritten labels in messy handwriting. Han Yingying recognized a few: diazepam, chlorpromazine, and several other names she had never heard of before.

"These are psychiatric medications," she said.

There was a stack of file folders in the corner. Zhou Lang flipped through them and pulled out a few medical records.

The medical records were quite fragmented: patients experienced hallucinations, aggressive behavior, and memory confusion after admission. Several patients' records were interrupted halfway through, with the last line uniformly marked – "Transferred to the operating room."

"Operating room." Zhou Lang put the medical record back. "The rules say we can't open the operating room door."

"Just because it can't be opened doesn't mean we don't need to know what's inside," Han Yingying said.

"you mean?"

"Take a detour. The hospital has ventilation ducts or maintenance access channels, so you can see inside without opening the door."

Zhou Lang thought for a moment: "We can give it a try."

The afternoon was used for preparation. Shen Yue found a hospital floor plan on the first floor, marking the location of the ventilation system. The entrance to the ventilation duct from the third-floor rooftop wasn't locked; it was simply welded shut.

Zhou Lang used a chainsaw to cut the weld joint, the noise echoing in the empty hallway. In the distance, the door of a room creaked open a crack, then slowly closed again.

Nobody wanted to think about what it was.

The ventilation duct was very narrow, only wide enough for one person to climb through. Zhou Lang went inside, and Han Yingying waited for him at the entrance.

The air inside the duct was stuffy and murky, and each step he took produced a dull metallic creak. He climbed for about six or seven minutes following the floor plan until he reached the ventilation opening above the operating room.

Looking down through the grille—

The operating room contained a dozen or so operating tables, neatly arranged. On each table was a "patient," their bodies covered in tubes. Their heads were fixed in place, facing the ceiling, their eyes open.

But those aren't normal eyes.

The pupils dilated to cover the entire eyeball, completely black, with no whites and no expression. They were just staring straight ahead, like a dozen black lenses pointed at the ceiling.

In the center of the operating room stood a person in surgical scrubs. No, not a person—its two arms were too long, reaching below its knees when they hung down, and each finger had three joints, performing some kind of operation on a "patient's" head.

Zhou Lang recorded the footage and then retreated.

That evening, he told everyone what he had seen.

The consultation room was quiet for a while.

"Are those on the operating table... previous players?" Lu Chen asked.

"It's hard to say," Zhou Lang said, "but the patients whose medical records say 'already transferred to the operating room' are probably those people."

Fang Xu rubbed the goosebumps on his arms: "So, can we really get out in three days?"

"Since the rules state 'patients can only be discharged if they survive to the morning of the third day,' there must be an exit strategy," Han Yingying said. "The key is not to break the rules."

The second night's routine was similar to the first: dispensing medicine, locking the door, and waiting for dawn. The only difference was that there were more voices in the corridor; no longer just Fang Xu's name was being called, but everyone's name was being called.

The hardest thing to bear is hearing your own name called.

"Han Yingying"

The voice was strange and effeminate, like a recording that had been sped up. Han Yingying gripped her wrist tightly, remaining silent, her face expressionless.

Zhou Lang's real name wasn't called. He was using a fake ID, "Lang Li Ge Lang". He shouted "Lang Li Ge Lang" three times. On the second time, Fang Xu almost couldn't help but laugh, but he managed to hold it back.

Shen Yue kicked him.

At five o'clock in the morning on the third day, a door that had not been there before lit up at the end of the corridor, with the words "Discharge Passage" written on it.

Five people filed out.

In the instant the white light enveloped them, Zhou Lang heard Han Yingying say something beside him. He didn't hear it clearly, but he saw her expression—as if she was thinking about something far away.

The settlement interface popped up.

All five survived, rating A+.

After Zhou Lang received the dungeon rewards, he didn't rush back to reality. Instead, he called out to Han Yingying in the transition space before leaving.

"Don't you think something's off about this instance?"

Han Yingying turned her head: "What's wrong?"

"Difficulty," Zhou Lang said. "The rules of Yong'an Hospital, the strength of the ghosts, and that operating room thing—these are not the configurations you would expect from a normal dungeon."

"you mean?"

"I've been investigating the underlying data of the Weird System recently," Zhou Lang said. "Some dungeons' difficulty ratings don't match their actual difficulty. They might be rated A-, but their actual difficulty is S-. Like this hospital dungeon, it's rated A-, but do you think it's only worth A-?"

Han Yingying remained silent for a few seconds.

She reflected on her past dungeon experiences. Each time was dangerous, each time teammates died, and she had always thought this was normal—wasn't it supposed to be this difficult?

But Zhou Lang's words sparked an idea.

If the difficulty of these dungeons was indeed artificially increased, or if a system malfunction caused incorrect matching—then the near-death experiences she had previously gone through would never have happened.

"What did you find out?" she asked.

"It's not certain yet, there isn't enough data," Zhou Lang said. "But comparing several copies, the outliers are increasing. This trend is not right."