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

Han Yingying didn't ask any more questions. Having partnered with Zhou Lang twice, she had figured out a pattern: he wouldn't talk about things he wasn't sure about, but what he did say was probably reliable.

The hospital doors opened automatically, and a neatly dressed young man walked out.

Wearing a suit, gold-rimmed glasses, and a polite smile, he clearly belonged to the elite class. His name tag was a size larger than everyone else's: Fang Xuming, Acting Dean.

Surprising.

Zhou Lang made a judgment immediately. It wasn't because of any mysterious aura or anything like that, but because this person walked without making a sound.

Fang Xuming's gaze swept across each player's face, finally settling on the VIP patient, where he stared for a couple more seconds.

"Welcome to Jimin Hospital." His voice was gentle. "Medical staff, please follow me to get the duty roster. Patients, please go to the information desk on the first floor to complete the admission procedures."

The crowd began to disperse. Zhou Lang followed Fang Xuming and entered the hospital through the revolving door.

The lobby was spotless, the floor so shiny you could see your reflection. Behind the reception desk sat two nurses, their makeup impeccable and their smiles perfect.

Rule number five: Don't trust a smiling nurse in the hallway.

These two are not in the corridor yet, so they are safe for now.

Fang Xuming led the players with medical identities to the second-floor office. There were four people—Zhou Lang, Han Yingying, the boxer, and the female obstetrician.

The shift schedule has been distributed. Zhou Lang is a surgeon and is on the third floor; Han Yingying is a nurse and is on the fourth floor; the boxer was assigned to the orthopedics department on the fifth floor—"Perfect, I'm good at orthopedics," Han Yingying rolled her eyes. The obstetrics and gynecology doctor was assigned to the sixth floor.

In the office, Fang Xuming stood in front of the whiteboard and wrote down the duty roster instructions with a marker.

"Although you're all new here, I believe you're all professionals," he said with a smile. "If you don't understand anything, you can ask the senior employees. By the way—"

He paused.

"The basement is under renovation, don't go there. Especially—"

He pushed up his glasses, the glare from the lenses obscuring his eyes.

"Especially the second basement level. It doesn't exist there."

Zhou Lang met his gaze for a second. Fang Xuming's smile remained unchanged.

"Any more questions?"

No one spoke.

"Then let's all go to our posts and report for duty."

As they left the office, the boxer approached them: "Something about that acting dean just doesn't seem right."

"He walks silently," Zhou Lang said.

The boxer paused for a moment, then said, "...I knew something was off, now I know why."

"See you on the third floor." Zhou Lang patted his shoulder, and they went their separate ways.

Third floor surgical corridor.

White walls, white floors, white ceilings. The fluorescent lights cast a harsh, unpleasant glow, making one's complexion look unwell. The ward doors were all closed, and occasionally a "nurse" would push a medicine cart past, nodding and smiling at Zhou Lang.

The smiles are so perfect. So perfect that everyone's smile is exactly the same.

On Zhou Lang's desk sat an old computer and a stack of medical records. He opened the first one.

Patient Name: Wang Jianguo

Reason for admission: Chronic bronchitis

Attending physicians: Lin Zhengqing (crossed out), Fang Xuming (handwritten addition)

Treatment plan: Special drug ZX-7

The remarks section was empty, but Zhou Lang looked at the back of the paper against the light and saw indentations. He lightly rubbed a layer of ink with a pencil, and the writing appeared.

Help me*.

The two characters were crooked and shaky, indicating that the writer's hand was shaking.

Zhou Lang flipped through the next medical record, and then the next. The treatment plan in every record was the highly effective drug ZX-7. The attending physician in each record had been changed from Lin Zhengqing to Fang Xuming.

The remarks section was mostly empty. Only three copies had indentations:

"Help me."

"They were conducting experiments underground."

"The dean isn't dead, he's here—"

The third copy ends here; the rest of the paper was torn off.

At 2 PM, the loudspeaker came on.

It wasn't a requiem, but a normal announcement: "All medical staff are requested to attend the afternoon meeting in the conference room on the third floor."

Zhou Lang put away the medical records and went to the conference room.

The meeting room was filled with "people." The quotation marks are necessary—these were doctors and nurses in white coats, some of whom had noticeably abnormal neck angles, their heads tilted at a 45-degree angle, but they were having normal conversations, and their colleagues next to them didn't seem to care.

Han Yingying was also there. She was sitting in the corner, and when she saw Zhou Lang come in, she slightly tilted her head and gestured to the left.

Zhou Lang followed his gaze.

A group photo hangs on the wall. It's an old photo, taken when the hospital was built. In the center of the front row stands an elderly man with gray hair, kind eyes, a crisp white coat, and the hospital's founder's badge pinned to his chest.

Standing next to him is a young Fang Xuming. The master and apprentice should have had a close relationship, but in the photo, there is a fist's distance between them.

At the very edge of the group photo, one person was cropped in half, leaving only half a shoulder and a hand gripping a cane.

A wealthy businessman?

"Good afternoon, everyone." Fang Xuming walked in. "Today's meeting has only one item on the agenda—"

He turned on the projector, and a line of text appeared on the screen:

**Recruiting for Phase III Clinical Trial of ZX-7 Special Drug**

"We need more volunteers."

The meeting lasted twenty minutes. Fang Xuming spoke in a very organized manner and with a kind tone, but the content was chilling.

The so-called "volunteer recruitment" was, in essence, about injecting newly admitted patients with ZX-7. Zhou Lang noticed that the "doctors" sitting in the conference room showed no reaction to this; some were even nodding.

Only four players had strange expressions.

The boxer was cracking his knuckles, a habit he had when nervous. The OB-GYN—who introduced herself as Xu Lan—calmly took notes, but her pen poked three holes in the paper. Han Yingying stared down at the table.

"Dr. Zhou," Fang Xuming suddenly called out his name.

"exist."

"How is the patient in room 317, which you are in charge of?"

Zhou Lang opened the medical record book beside him. He had never been to room 317, but his memory was good—he had glanced at it while flipping through the medical record earlier.

"Wang Jianguo, chronic bronchitis, 43 days after admission, has not yet started the ZX-7 treatment course."

Fang Xuming smiled and said, "43 days and it still hasn't started? That won't do. Let's arrange it tomorrow."

"Okay," Zhou Lang readily agreed.

Fang Xuming glanced at him again, but didn't say anything more.

After the meeting, the players didn't rush to disperse. The boxer gave a signal, and several people discreetly gathered at different times in the third-floor storage room.

The space was small, piled with expired medicines and an old wheelchair. The light bulbs flickered.

"Let's check some information first," Zhou Lang said. "What intelligence have you obtained?"

Xu Lanxian said, "On the sixth floor of the obstetrics and gynecology department, there are only two wards occupied, but the registration book lists seventeen names, while the remaining fifteen are marked 'transferred to another hospital.' It doesn't say where they were transferred to."

"The fifth floor is even weirder," the boxer chimed in. "There's a door at the end of the corridor that says 'Medicine Storage,' but when I passed by, I heard...that kind of sound coming from inside."

What was that sound?

"Like meat being cut."

The storage room fell silent for a moment.